![]() ![]() Neighbours tell stories passed down over the years. There are rumours that a secret door once led to a concealed wine cellar. They show a house with three bedrooms, each with a separate entrance and its own bathroom. Courtesy Earl Haas Thomas Hooper:Īlthough there is no mention of the Cook Street house in his portfolio, the blueprints are signed by the architect and bear his address. She paid cash for the two lots and took out a building permit in her name and commissioned Hooper to design her brothel. Business was booming and she decided to move into a more upscale facility in Fairfield. She arrived from California in 1912 at the age of 50 and took over an established brothel on Broughton Street with a steady clientele from the Union Club and Driard Hotel. The going price is just under $2 million.Ĭhristina is a shadowy figure. According to the real estate blurb it was remodeled into a five-suite apartment complex in 1945 and it’s the first time the house has been on the market in 55 years. It’s a gorgeous four-square house built in the Classic Revival style. ![]() And in 1912, the same year he designed Hycroft in Shaughnessy, Vancouver’s Winch Building and submitted plans for UBC, he designed Christina Haas’s, Cook Street brothel. He designed hundreds of buildings including the Victoria Public Library, the Rogers Chocolates and the Munro’s Books Building in Victoria. Thomas Hooper once had the largest architectural practice in Western Canada. This is an excerpt from my chapter on the Red Light District in Sensational Victoria. Christina Haas commissioned Thomas Hooper to design her Cook Street brothel in 1913. In 1912, when it was tough for a woman to make a decent living, Christina Haas arrived in Victoria and bought herself a brothel. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus. I’d like to thank Catherine Falks for naming her son Anders and not William or John/Jack. Another interesting connection to Vancouver’s history is that Rose’s brother Douglas Smith engineered the “gravity driven falling ball drive” on the Gastown Steam Clock-his name is on the plaque. ![]() He married the boss’s daughter Rose Smith (who also happens to be Anders Falk’s grandma). One of the sons John (Jack) worked for Ideal Ironworks. William married Harriet and they raised three kids at a house on Quebec and 30 th. During the ‘40s it was the Embassy Ballroom, in the ‘60s it was Dante’s Inferno, later it hosted psychedelic bands as Retinal Circus, and since 1982 it’s been a gay joint called Celebrities. The building has gone through a number of transformations over the years, but mostly stayed in the entertainment business. Hooper was a highly regarded architect, and his buildings included Hycroft in Shaughnessy, the Winch building, and at least one brothel. Thomas Hooper designed the building in 1911 for the Lester Dance Academy. In the 1920s William played piano in the house band at Lester Court at 1022 Davie Street. Jack’s younger brother William was a musician who worked at the Bay as his day job. William and Mary Garden family in Stanley Park mid-1890s. It was also Jack who took this photograph of his parents on what looks like really large tricycles. When he wasn’t taking photos, he was likely hanging out at the rowing club-this ca.1910 photo of the rowing club was one of his photos. And that was lucky for us, because he shot some of these wonderful photos of early Vancouver. John (known as Jack) became a lumber broker and he was also an avid photographer. Jack Garden, back row fourth from the left with members of the Vancouver Photography Club. William died suddenly in 1897, and it appears that the “Sons” had other ideas, because the business disappeared from the directories the following year. William and Mary Garden arrived in Vancouver in 1889, opened up the Garden and Sons Wholesale Tea and Coffee on East Hastings, and lived for a time at a house at Thurlow and Alberni. I wrote about the Garden family a couple of weeks back. This story appears in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the city’s hidden history William and Jack Garden before they left for Canada in the late 1880s. ![]()
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