Downtown Vancouver is tightly packed into just 3.7 square kilometres in a typical North American grid formation, with glorious Stanley Park at the ocean end, Gastown and Chinatown at the eastern end, with the financial district, Coal Harbour, West End, Davie Village and Yaletown in between.

Downtown is a heady mix of glittering skyscrapers and early 20^th Century historic buildings, but there’s really nothing older here than the late 19^th Century. Vancouver’s oldest standing building is the Hastings Mill Store (not actually in the city) built in 1865, with the Rowing Club Boathouse on Coal Harbour built in 1886. Even the city’s Cathedral wasn’t built until 1888 – so, it’s a young city, only founded and incorporated as an actual city in 1886, following the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway and named after George Vancouver, the British explorer who first charted the area in 1792. 

On the morning of Sunday, June 13^th 1886, barely two months after its founding, the fledgling settlement of no more than a thousand buildings burnt to the ground. By early afternoon, only about three buildings still stood, the rest had burnt to a crisp in under one hour! As one resident said at the time, “Vancouver didn’t burn, it exploded”. 

There are some beautiful buildings here both old and new. My two favourites are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, age and design wise. First up, the beautiful Art Deco Marine Building. Completed in 1930, it was the city’s tallest building and is listed as one of the best-preserved Art Deco buildings in the world. According to the architects, the building was intended to evoke ‘some great crag rising from the sea, clinging with sea flora and fauna, tinted in sea-green, touched with gold’. Well, I reckon they nailed it! It reputedly cost C$2.3 million to build, a huge amount of money in the late 1920’s. And a staggering C$1m over budget! And its timing was terrible – due to the Great Depression, it was ultimately sold to the Guinness family of Ireland (who have bought and sold a shedload of property and land here over the years) for just $900,000. Today, the building has been largely refitted to house modern commercial tenants, so only the magnificent exterior and the lobby with its marine-themed carvings, stained glass and gorgeous brass elevators are accessible to the visitor. 

My other favourite building is the recently completed Butterfly, a strikingly distinctive 57 story residential tower designed by Revery Architecture. It has unique curved, overlapping cylinders clad with prefabricated white panels intended to evoke clouds. Inspired by natural forms and even a pipe organ – it blends high-end condo living with a community space for the (attached) First Baptist Church. You can see this building gleaming in the sunlight all over town and I’m sure it’ll be the first of many more dazzling skyscrapers to come. The ‘butterfly effect’. 

https://thebutterflyvancouver.ca

It seems every modern city needs a high point look out. Sydney has the Centrepoint Tower, Toronto has the CN Tower, Seattle has the Space Needle and Vancouver has, well, the Vancouver Lookout. It opened in 1977 and is 168 metres above the city with truly spectacular views – reaching as far as Mount Olympus in Washington State USA. It has a 360-degree view of the city and its environs, across the Burrard Inlet to the spectacular snow-capped North Shore Mountains.

Fun fact: It was inaugurated in 1977 by Neil Armstrong. It has a real 70’s vibe, but was actually really informative with excellent placemarks pointing out features near (some right beneath you) and far. It’s an excellent vantage point to map out the city and plan the days ahead. 

Down on the waterfront at Coal Harbour is the iconic Canada Place, known for its roof of soaring white sails. I read that it’s often compared with the Sydney Opera House, but I’m here to tell you that the Sydney Opera House sadly it is not. When you’re up close and personal to the building and its sails they’re aging rather badly in parts (restoration is underway), so for now I guess best viewed from afar on a sunny day – that’s when they gleam, like any white sail would I suppose. It was originally built for the Vancouver Expo in 1986 as the Canadian Pavilion, but in more recent years has become a convention centre, hotel and a cruise terminal, particularly for Alaska bound cruises. 

When you’re pounding the streets of Vancouver, you’re never far away from a Sea Plane or Flying Boat as they’re sometimes called. They buzz the skies almost constantly. The Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre is located right in front of Canada Place in a purpose-built facility on Coal Harbour.
A 30-min flying experience over the city and harbour costs C$160 per person and I’m sure the views on a clear day would be spectacular. Sadly, the last few days have been super wintery with sleet and rain so we may have to leave this for another day.