HOUSE AND HOME IN VANCOUVER: THE EMERGENCE OF A WEST COAST URBAN LANDSCAPE 1886-1929

This thesis explores the making of the Vancouver residential landscape during the first fifty years after completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Vancouver offered unusual residential opportunities within a rapidly expanding commercial and industrial city. High wages and cheap land made accessible by the streetcar enabled even very ordinary people to buy or build houses on lots up to eight miles from their place of work. This immigrant society valued land and home-ownership, and the attainment of such goals in Vancouver's speculative property market is explored against a background of conditions elsewhere.;The significance of these landscape elements are discussed in relation to technological change, social values, class relations, and regional distinctiveness. Vancouver's suburban landscape reflects the region's unique migration patterns, social aspirations and economy.;As an exercise in urban historical geography, the thesis also offers a perspective on issues of identity and meaning that are of concern in contemporary human geography.;House styles in Vancouver, as influenced by builders, pattern books and architects, are examined as indicators of imported values and of local opportunities. Three broad styles are recognized. Before approximately 1910, factory-made parts were used for a range of cabins, frame houses, and turreted mansions; their Victorian Gothic images suggest the industrial and Eastern American pedigree of houses on the downtown peninsula. From 1910 to the mid-1920s the California Bungalow became popular. This was a simpler house that emphasized texture of material and more open plan. Mimicking both California styles and real estate practices, Vancouver building contractors added a strongly West Coast element to the city's streetscapes. A third style, also popular from 1910 to the 1930s, contributed revival styles drawn largely from pre-industrial England. Impressive mansions for the city's elite were models for the smaller, stuccoed cottages with timber trim that typified middle-class homes.