The search for Vancouver’s real heart

Article and photos by Sean Ruthen

While on a visit to Vancouver in 1912, a British landscape architect named Thomas Mawson spoke to a room full of prominent businessmen and citizens, then known as the Canadian Club, on the subject of ‘Civic Art and Vancouver’s Opportunity.’ He proposed to those present a vision of Vancouver that would put it on the world’s stage of beautiful cities, much like Paris and London – Georgia Street would become a Champ Elysee, with Lost Lagoon being it’s terminus in a great circular pond, in the center of which would stand a great column with a statue of Captain Vancouver atop it, all surrounded by a great civic promenade comprised of the city’s most prestigious cultural buildings. While mostly touting the planning philosophy of his day, itself largely influenced by the Chicago World’s Fair of 1892, he was correct in pointing out to those present that Vancouver lacked a real heart, i.e. a cohesive centre where people could come together randomly for no reason and all reasons at once.

The Vancouver Public Space Network, otherwise known as VPSN, is currently holding a design ideas competition entitled Where’s the Square to open a discussion on the very subject of finding Vancouver’s real heart. Where could it be located? And what would it look like? On November 15, the VPSN website will post design brief and evaluation criteria.

As a warm-up to the launching of Where’s the Square, the VPSN, on September 23rd asked Lance Berelowitz, Cornelia Oberlander, and Bing Thom to address a crowd of 250 at Library Square. (For a concise summary of the proceedings, Gordon Ross has recorded in point form the two hour event and made it available at: www.disseminate.com/2008/09/wheres-square-public-space-design.html.)

After the announcement of the competition, which is open to all who would imagine and present a new public square for Vancouver, director of VPSN Andrew Pask asked the panelists to relate their personal preferences for a favourite public square. I was not surprised that none of the three admitted to any Canadian square being their favourite, though Nathan Phillips Square did come up at one point in the evening as a good example, with the commercial kitsch at the corner of Yonge and Dundas Street agreed upon as a bad example. They were in fact all pretty unanimous in that the circi and piazzi of Europe were far superior in their attention to detail than any North American equivalent, whether in their exposure to light, the proper proportions of void space to built space, or the richness of the details and materials used. Mrs. Oberlander in fact pondered how different the civic spirit around Library Square very well might be today if the original specified paving materials had been used, like the generous slabs of stone being used for the newly refurbished Union Square in San Francisco, instead of the pre-fabricated pavers that are there now.

While in London this last summer, I happened upon a small park in Soho [pictured left] while walking from the Picadilly Circus to the British Museum. Strictly adhering to the surrounding street grid, this small square of civic space was covered from end to end, much to my surprise, with people occupying every single square foot, simply because it was covered with grass and not asphalt or paving stones, like so much of every other square foot surrounding the square. All great cities possess such spaces that may be better classified as ‘moments’ than ‘squares’, but they are invariably manifest as some sort of public realm bound by dimension and materiality. Obviously Vancouver has many such ‘moments’, whether it is along the Seawall, or in one of the alleyways in Gastown. It would seem the present competition is asking the question ‘What is a good public space for Vancouver’ rather than the more general question ‘What makes a good civic square.’

As I was mentally surveying the existing civic squares in our city while at the Library for the presentation, it occurred to me that Vancouver has a long history of creating publicly recognized civic realms, and subsequently abandoning them. How else to explain the cases of the plaza in front of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, or Centennial Square just up the street, as well as the aforementioned Library Square. Cornelia Oberlander, while understandably adamant about her refurbished Robson Square - that it will return the civic heart to the CBD - likewise voiced some concern about how those responsible at City Hall have become over the years increasingly negligent of their civic responsibility to support some form of civic pride in the city’s great outdoors.

Having lived in six Canadian cities, I have been fortunate enough to experience first hand some other great moments of civic space across the country. Halifax has its historic waterfront, within easy walking distance of its Public Gardens, balanced by a civic square at the midpoint which itself is flanked by both the City Hall and provincial legislature. But it is the civic square named after Sir Winston Churchill in Edmonton that meets my own personal criteria of what a civic space should be. Simply put, it fulfills the two most important functions of first being a forum of the city’s cultural institutions, including its City Hall, while secondly drawing people to the square itself, mostly through civic sponsored events. Edmonton has the added bonus of having the CP mile on the square’s west side (i.e. the road connecting the city’s train station to its CP hotel). The other three sides are occupied by the City Hall on the north, the public library on its south, while a triumvirate of cultural buildings occupy its east side – the Edmonton art gallery (currently being rebuilt to resemble a Bilbao-like spectacle), the Winspear, home to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and the Citadel Theatre, the city’s most preeminent playhouse. But, as already noted, it is the fact that the city encourages such summer festivals as the Jazz Festival and the Works to set up there, complete with a prerequisite stage/tent and the very Canadian adjunct of the beer garden, all which combine to draw throngs of people in the summer, much as the New Year’s First Night draws them in the winter.

All three panelists agreed that Vancouverites enjoy coming together for various activities, whether to watch the summer fireworks at English Bay, or avail ourselves to free outdoor stages during the jazz festival. The problem I think is wherein these events are increasingly private enterprises, the City becomes mere facilitator to sheriff the events. What is at stake here I think is whether it is our City’s obligation to create a public space for its citizens to come together, and not just provide a tourist another commercial tourist attraction.

So what are the primary civic squares/spaces of Vancouver, whether ceremonial, cultural, or civic?

1) Maple Tree Square – the space outside the city’s first courthouse, itself a modest log house next to the young township of Granville’s butchers and blacksmiths (now known as Blood Alley), this small area bound by two maple trees is celebrated as the site where the city’s founders incorporated Vancouver in 1886. Four months later, the first council meeting would be held on this spot amidst the charred remains of a large percentage of the city’s building stock, as the young city had almost all but burnt to the ground in the space of forty minutes after a CPR crew’s clearing fire was blown out of control by a freak wind.

2) Victory Square & Oppenheimer Park – thought many won’t remember, Victory Square was originally known as Court House Square, as it was home to Vancouver’s second courthouse, itself demolished after architect Francis Rattenbury designed a new courthouse on Robson between Howe and Hornby in 1911. Shortly after its razing the prominent businesses in the surrounding buildings – the Dominion Tower, Sun Tower, and Flack Block – either followed the courthouse west or went bankrupt, as most of the area’s banks and shops relocated along Burrard Street, west of the CPR mile, to form what remains up to today the city’s CBD. The square now is home to the Cenotaph, and is where the city’s annual Remembrance Day ceremony is held. As for Oppenheimer Park, though not technically a square, it is important to note that as a civic space during the Great Depression (as it was then known as the Powell Street Grounds), it was declared in 1936 by the Vancouver Parks Board to be the only park in the city where citizens were free to voice any viewpoint, political, religious, or otherwise.

3) Centennial Square – as Lance Berelowitz discussed during his segment of the panelists’ presentations, this is probably the city’s most formal ceremonial square (and present home of the Olympic clock). The highest point of elevation in the downtown peninsula, its civic importance was all but abandoned as the law courts moved into Arthur Erickson’s newly designed courthouse in 1980. With the VAG taking over Rattenbury’s near 70 year-old structure, the new tenants required only one principal entrance (as Mr. Thom pointed out), and in order to front the new Robson Square, the VAG’s entry would be from the south, a complete about face from the courthouse’s intended use. With the VAG moving to a new home in the near future, a new tenant could reopen the north side of the building, allowing a pedestrian promenade through the building to reinvigorate this old square.

4) Robson Square – of course no matter who moves into the VAG, the old Centennial Square will always play second fiddle to Robson Square; certainly once the scaffolding and hoarding are removed from Mrs. Oberlander’s urban landscape. With the new stramps finished, and a new ice rink pending (without the clamshell as she pointed out), Robson Square will shortly be returned to the city as the Lower Mainland’s cultural and civic centre. It was quite heartbreaking to see it disintegrate the years prior to its present reconstruction, and the testament of its importance as a civic space could be no more evident than the constant gathering of Vancouverite’s on the VAG’s south stairs. It is indeed a strange thing to sit on a massive set of steps (if not perhaps a hint of civil disobedience in the blatant disregard for handrail bylaws). I’ve experienced it on the Lincoln Memorial steps in Washington DC, the stairs of the New York Public Library, the Spanish Steps in Rome, and closer to home, on the stairs of Alberta’s legislature building – the ‘Ledge’ as its affectionately known to Edmontonians (the small stair on the south side of Library Square is close but no cigar). It is as though there seems to be a common and natural human affinity to gather on a grand stair in the great outdoors.

5) Library Square/Queen Elizabeth Square – a small footnote for the civic spaces that could’ve been, it has already been noted why Mrs. Oberlander believes Library Square never fulfilled its potential – watch this space however, as in 2015 the city and province will finally allow the roof to be occupied as a public space (as it was originally intended), at which point the Library may become at long last the civic and cultural destination that it was always meant to have been. As for the Queen Elizabeth Plaza, it was the intent of the Montreal architects who won the commission that its southern facing plaza would become a new Centennial Square, which of course never happened.

But certainly the curious nature of Vancouver’s relationship to its civic squares does not mean the city is without other wonderful ‘moments’ – the marketplace on Granville Island is just as charged with its buskers ands other activities as anyplace downtown could be, and beautiful parks like Van Dusen and Queen Elizabeth remind us how fortunate we are to live in a climate that can boast such sumptuous flora year round. And of course, one cannot forget the Seawall, where if perhaps its length were divided up and laid side-by-side, we could very well boast a civic space on a scale with Tiananmen Square. Mr. Berelowitz, echoing his conclusions from his book ‘Dream City’, confessed that the ‘Edge City’ phenomenon which typifies Vancouver is indeed unusual, though understandable given the beauty of the surrounding mountains and ocean. Perhaps he is troubled with a notion where we are all standing around gawking at the scenery instead of coming together to form a real sense of community. Not so troubling when you consider that somehow a quarter of a million of us gather together on the shores of English Bay for four nights a summer without getting into each other’s hair (too much). And then there is Mr. Thom’s vision for the city’s next civic square, on the shores of east False Creek, where he imagines the removal of the Georgia Viaduct to compliment a new cultural compound at which the new VAG will be the centerpiece.

As a civic forum, the two hour discussion at Library Square was in the end a question of what unifies our community. As one observer asked: “What are we celebrating? What is it that will bring us together in this new Public Square?” In the end it was Bing Thom who provided the evening’s most poignant question, as we get ready to go to the polls both north and south of the border: “Are we electing representatives or leaders to run our cities and decide where and how we should gather?” It remains to be seen whether the City will be up to the task of supporting Vancouver’s sense of identity, by establishing a centre where its citizens may be momentarily distracted from its scenic surroundings to take pride in itself and what it has accomplished as a community. It is in this platonic civic space that perhaps our city may at last find true definition, and manifest itself upon this awesome landscape between the mountains and the sea.

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Sean Ruthen is former intern architect representative to the AIBC Council, and presently intern representative to the RAIC Chapter in BC. A graduate of UBC’s School of Architecture, he is presently employed at the office of IBI/HB Architects while studying for his registration exams and finding the time to write for re:place. He is not an aspiring pastry chef.