Description of Historic Place

The historic place at 7 West Hastings Street is a four-storey red brick Victorian Italianate commercial structure located at the southern edge of Vancouver's historic Gastown district.

Heritage Value

The value of 7 West Hastings Street lies in the historic relationship between this area and the economy of early Vancouver. Built for mixed usage, it typifies scores of residential/commercial buildings built in the late nineteenth century, when this area of Vancouver was the centre of commerce and industry. This type of hotel was in high demand not only to house workers between jobs but also to accommodate travellers and businessmen. Its proximity to the interurban station of the BC Electric Railway, fronting on Carrall and West Hastings Street, and to Woodward’s Department Store, opened in 1902 at the corner of Abbott and Hastings, lured shoppers from the surrounding region. It is adjacent to what was then the more fashionable and expensive shopping area on West Cordova Street.

Built in 1900 as an apartment block, the street level commercial frontage housed a farm implements business, McTaggart and Moscrop Hardware, and an optician. Vancouver Drug Company became a tenant in 1918 and remained at that address until the 1930s. Gibson's Dairy Products occupied 7 West Hastings Street from the 1920s the 1950s while Canadian Window Bakeries held tenancy throughout the 1930s. Both firms moved elsewhere as the centre of commerce shifted to the south and east and to the suburbs. The building is currently a residential hotel.

The value also lies in the function and the architecture; the building was built to provide housing and retail goods to a largely male population of resource industry workers and commercial travelers. Its design and construction are significant as they reflect the last of the Victorian-era styles before the transition to the more restrained and functional Edwardian style, and to masonry and steel construction. It stands as a reminder of the time when this area of Gastown was the hub of Vancouver’s commerce and industry.

Source: City of Vancouver Heritage Conservation Program

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of 7 West Hastings Street include:
- rectangular form and massing, and consistent scale with neighbouring properties
- its proximity to the former Woodward’s Department Store and the remaining historic structures on the block and within the Gastown historic district
- built to property line with no setbacks
- external features of the late Victorian Italianate style including: brick facade with ornate sheet metal cornice and flanked by brick pilasters which are terminated at the top by decorated finials, six bay pattern of fenestration on second and third levels, with arched window openings on second storey, and three large squared bays on the fourth storey, and rusticated stone sills and trim details
- ornamental brick work above third-storey windows
- main floor storefront