“Vancouver Vanishes” tells the story of the heritage homes that are being knocked down in Vancouver, B.C., at an unprecedented rate — as they are in Seattle.
John lived in my house, long ago. His first name is carved on the dark wooden frame around my bedroom door; small block letters, uneven, perhaps scratched out by a child using the edge of a dime or a discarded nail. Perhaps he was punished for his naughtiness, but secretly pleased to have left his mark. And perhaps he’s now an old man, somewhere, remembering the house of his Seattle childhood.
Built in 1929, my house is full of stories I’ll never know, and I love that about it; though I know every corner and creak by heart, I’ve only lived in it for a fraction of its years. Those who love old houses — and yes, we’re a romantic, impractical lot — live among past lives, seeing someone’s memories in every inch of worn-smooth wood and ripply glass. An old house is a time capsule — and when it’s suddenly gone, the history goes with it.
The new book “Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival”(Anvil Press, $32.95) is a collection of musings on what happens to a city’s soul when its old houses begin to disappear. Vancouver, B.C., my hometown, has seen a staggering level of development since the 1980s, particularly in recent years. If you drive through neighborhoods like Kerrisdale and Dunbar, long known for their array of small, often charming 1920s and ’30s houses on larger lots, you see a transformation: Popping up everywhere are massive new homes, squeezed in next to the bungalows like overdressed guests at a crowded party.
Demolition permits for single-family homes in the city of Vancouver have averaged 940 per year since 2012; it’s estimated that 42 percent of the houses are pre-1940. By my math, that’s just under 1,200 old houses gone from Vancouver in 2012-2014. It’s happening here too, but to a lesser degree: In those same three years, 756 houses built in 1940 or earlier were torn down in all of King County.
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But you don’t need numbers to do what writer/activist Caroline Adderson, who wrote several of the essays in “Vancouver Vanishes” and coordinated the entire project, does every day: She walks around her Vancouver neighborhood, with her dog, and watches things change: the signs going up, then the fences, and finally the wrecking balls. A few years ago, she started taking pictures.
“I’d send them to [City Council members] and say, look at this beautiful house that’s about to be demolished. This is not green. Surely you would like to take action on this issue,” Adderson said, in a phone interview last week. Frustrated by the lack of response, she started a Facebook page (also called Vancouver Vanishes) in 2013, which now has more than 9,000 followers.
On that page, and in the book, are dozens and dozens of photos, taken by Adderson and photographer Tracey Ayton. Many look like someone’s storybook home — front porches, pointed rooflines, arched windows or doorways, leaded glass — while others look like the pleasant, modest working-class homes they once were. All are captioned simply with an address, the year built, the name and occupation of the original owner (a plumber, a teacher, a carpenter, a “dental mechanic,” a millworker, an accountant), and, at the bottom, a single, poignant word: “DEMOLISHED.”
An eclectic collection, “Vancouver Vanishes” includes poetry (from Evelyn Lau, a former city of Vancouver poet laureate), journalism (from Globe and Mail writer Kerry Gold), civic history, and personal memoir — and, on nearly every page, those photographs. It’s not all bad news for old-house buffs: In one essay, Adderson tells the charming story of “The Dorothies,” two matching mirror-image 1930s Tudors that were scheduled for demolition but saved and moved to a nearby location. But what stays with you, when the pages are closed, is a sense of something lost.
Adderson, who’s primarily a fiction writer, describes herself as an accidental “narrative activist.” “I don’t consider myself a heritage activist. I know nothing about architecture, or about planning,” she said. “I look at an old house, and I see, over time, the stories of all the people who’ve lived in the house. You have these layers and layers of narrative in the houses, and as soon as they go down, it’s gone.
“People say, ‘Oh, the new houses are the heritage houses of the future.’ But they’re not — they’re synthetic, they’re made of plywood, they’re only built to stand 20 or 30 years. That’s not enough time for the stories to grow inside them.”
Perhaps John would agree.