Vancouver Museum, Hastings and Main

This 1931 image by photographer Philip Timms is titled "City Museum, Art Gallery and Library, Vancouver, B.C." It is a nice clear image of the Carnegie building and the former City Hall beside it, the turreted building to the left. A lot of overhead wires have been painted out of the sky, remnants are visible in some places. A city streetcar is barely visible on the far left, partially blocking a sign that says "Vancouver City Public Market." Street car tracks can be seen in the intersection. At this corner, where Hastings crosses Main, there were street car tracks on both sides of each road for two-way traffic, thus 4 tracks crossing at the intersection, and a streetcar on each track could turn left, right, or go straight through. It was an incredibly complicated intersection. There must have been centrally operated underground electric switches. Photo courtesy City of Vancouver Archives.

These colour photographs of the original Vancouver Museum (now known as Carnegie Centre) were taken in 1998 and 2014 by Gary Sim. The Vancouver Museum originally occupied the top floor of this building. Surprisingly little has visually changed in the 16 years between these two photographs. The huge swoopy canopy over the entrance to the public washrooms (as I recall) and the structure that supported it is gone, as is a tree down by the lane. In the picture below a descending handrail can be seen in the lower left corner, with a guardrail around it. The name "CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY" is visible above the tall entry columns. Editor's note: this, along with the art gallery, was one of the few places that our Trafalgar Elementary School class went to on field trips. We "ooh'ed" and "ah'ed" over the mummy, the glass specimen trays of incredibly large or nasty-looking bugs stuck on pins (some of them quite probably gifted from the collection of R.S. Sherman), the stuffed animals, and all manner of other items including ship models, artwork, and "indian artifacts."

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