This Week in History, 1889: The Alhambra Hotel opens in Gastown
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2020 21:17:44 +0000
The date “1886” is prominently displayed at the top of the Byrnes Block at Carrall and Water streets.
This is significant, because that’s the year the City of Vancouver was incorporated. The Byrnes Block is one of only three 1886 buildings left in Gastown.
But dating old buildings can be tricky. The Byrnes Block is also known as the Alhambra Hotel, because it was the building’s most prominent tenant in the pioneer days.
This week, I found an article about the opening of the Alhambra in the Vancouver World. But it wasn’t in 1886, it was on Feb. 2, 1889.
“(The Byrnes Block/Alhambra) was built in stages,” explains Don Luxton, who was the heritage consultant when the building was restored in 2006-’08. “The first part of the building was started, but then it wasn’t completed right away. Then they started the next part, then the next part.”
In this case, the northern part of the structure at 2 Water St. was started in December 1886 and completed in 1887. A second section to the south on Carrall Street went up in 1888, but was only one storey. So a second storey was added on Carrall in 1890.
The main floor had retailers, including a liquor store, a baker and a barber. The Alhambra’s rooms were on the second floor of both wings.
Asked if the hotel had a bar, Luxton laughed.
“There was always a bar,” he said. “Let’s be serious.”
January 4, 1969 photo of the Byrnes Block, before it was restored. Dan Scott/Vancouver Sun
In fact, the legendary lifeguard Joe Fortes tended bar at the Alhambra in 1898. The Alhambra/Byrnes Block was also built on the site of the Deighton Hotel, an early watering hole opened by Gassy Jack Deighton, the founder of Gastown.
The Deighton Hotel perished along with almost all the wooden buildings of early Gastown in the Great Fire of June 13, 1886. So, a Victoria investor and auctioneer named George Byrnes erected a handsome two-storey brick building in its place.
The Byrnes Block was designed by architect Elmer Fisher in the “Victorian Italianate” style, with a red brick and light trim façade and tall windows. The Alhambra was a high-class hotel when it opened — each room had a fireplace, which is why you can still see a mass of brick chimneys peaking out of the roof of the building.
“Capt. Clements, the genial proprietor, has spared no pains to make this first-class saloon as attractive as any in the city,” said the World. “The interior woodwork is most artistic and is the work of J. Stamford. The ornamental painting has been executed by A. Hodgson and could not be excelled.”
The building was erected on Ground Zero of Gastown. When Vancouver’s first business, Stamp’s Mill, started up in the summer of 1867, Gassy Jack rowed over from New Westminster to build a ramshackle saloon just outside the mill’s timber lease.
The Globe Saloon thrived and a small settlement grew up around it. In 1870, the colonial government surveyed the fledgling metropolis, and the Globe was in the middle of Carrall Street. So Deighton tore it down and erected the Deighton Hotel a few steps west, beside a big maple tree (today’s Maple Tree Square).
A famous Harry Devine photo shows a bunch of pioneer Vancouverites meeting near the maple tree just before the Great Fire in 1886. George Byrnes is one of two men in the foreground of the photo, with a beard and a hat.
A group of men stand around the old maple tree in Gastown just before the Great Fire in 1886. George Byrnes is in the foreground with a bear and hat, beside the dog. The view is south down Carrall Street, with the steps of the old Deighton House Hotel at the far right. Harry Devine/Vancouver Archives.
Byrnes was an Australian who moved to Canada in 1866, when he was 26. The ship he was travelling on was wrecked off the California coast, and Byrnes was among a handful of survivors.
“He lost everything he had, but his splendid physique enabled him to secure a little buoy during the struggle,” said Byrnes’s obituary in the March 24, 1899, edition of the Victoria Colonist. “He was picked up off the beach just south of San Francisco on the day following the wreck, quite unconscious.”
But he survived and in 1867 went to the Cariboo, where he was appointed sheriff in 1874. After a dozen years he moved to Victoria, where he was an auctioneer and investor. He never seems to have lived in Vancouver, but because he owned property here he was on the voter’s list for Vancouver’s first election on May 3, 1886. He did a lot of work as an auctioneer here, though.
Byrnes had heart trouble for several years and died after going to Victoria’s Union Club on March 13, 1899. He was 59. His building underwent a restoration in 2006 by Robert Fung’s Salient Group and is now considered one of Vancouver’s heritage gems.
Vancouver from the water, circa 1890. This photo shows the Gastown waterfront when Vancouver was four years old. This view looks southwest – the Byrnes Block on Carrall street is on the left side of the photo. Bailey and Neelands/Vancouver Archives AM54-S4-: Wat P4.
Vancouver World story on the opening of the Alhambra Hotel on Feb. 2, 1889.
The Alhambra Hotel ran into financial difficulties only four years after it opened and was sold “by tender.” This ad is from the June 27, 1893 Vancouver World.
Ad for an auction conducted by George Byrnes in the May 7, 1894 Vancouver World. Byrnes built the Byrnes Block.
Ad for the Alhambra Hotel in the Sept. 15, 1894 Vancouver World.