Set in concrete: the historic and spatial distribution of concrete sidewalks in Vancouver, BC

Abstract

Modern concrete sidewalks have existed for approximately a hundred and fifty years in urban centers. The city of Vancouver, British Columbia has date-stamped its concrete sidewalks when they are freshly laid for just over one hundred years. Almost 800 of these concrete sidewalk date-stamps from 1906 to 1992 were collected as points. Many studies regarding urban development and growth utilize historic atlases and maps with their changing road networks over time. This study uses GIS to map Vancouver's concrete sidewalk stamps dated from 1906 to 1992 and re-constructs its early original concrete sidewalks from 1901 to 1911 to establish the historic and spatial distribution of concrete sidewalks in the city. The use of concrete sidewalk date construction data offer another view of the development of Vancouver's urban built environment as compared to relying on the growth of street networks over time as shown in historic atlases and maps.

Keywords:

• concrete sidewalks
• spatial distribution
• urban development
• built environment
• historic

1. Introduction

Concrete sidewalks are a part of our everyday built environment in current urban areas. However, modern concrete sidewalks have only been with us for approximately a hundred and fifty years and less in some urban centers. A few North American cities, and specifically Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, date-stamp their concrete sidewalks when they are freshly laid. Most cities do not follow this practice.

Many studies regarding urban development and growth utilize historic atlases and maps with their changing road networks over time. (Clarke, Hoppen & Gaydos, 1997; Shen, 2002; Siebert, 2000; Tucci, Giordano, & Ronza, 2010; Wheeler, 2008) This study uses GIS to map Vancouver's concrete sidewalk stamps dated from 1906 to 1992 and re-constructs its early original concrete sidewalks from 1901 to 1911 to establish the historic and spatial distribution of concrete sidewalks in the city. The use of concrete sidewalk date construction data provide another view of the development of Vancouver's urban built environment as compared to relying on the growth of street networks over time as shown in historic atlases and maps.

Atlases and maps also usually employ a certain color scheme to show commercial and residential presence which provides another view of growth but usually at a small scale. Works dealing specifically with Vancouver (Geological Survey of Canada, 1923; Goad, 1912; Hayes, 2005; MacDonald, 1992; Meyer, 1968; Vancouver Town Planning Commission, 1929) and numerous other street maps all present a view of Vancouver's development but none detail its concrete sidewalks.

Map 1 in this study shows the spatial distribution of Vancouver's concrete sidewalks from 1906 to 1992. Maps 2 and 3 are drawn over historic maps from 1923 and 1910 respectively, because while these maps display established road networks, in comparison concrete sidewalks were still limited.

Imperial units of feet and miles are employed in this study because these were the units of measure in the contemporary documents employed.

2. Data sources

This study began by asking the City of Vancouver Engineering Department, and specifically the Streets and Sidewalks Department if they maintained a database, or records, of the concrete sidewalk date-stamps and why the sidewalks were stamped. No response was received. It is assumed no database exists and suspected that the answer as to why the sidewalks were stamped has been lost in time. However, Vancouver acknowledges the historic value of the concrete sidewalk date-stamps as the city instructs contractors that

old historical sidewalk stamp markings 1950 or older have special value to the City and are required to be saved and [kept] in place. The City must be contacted and consulted prior to the demolition and removal of the markings. (Vancouver Street Restoration Manual, 2008)

The two main sources of data for this study were field data and data gleaned from original documents held at the City of Vancouver Archives.

2.1. Field data

Data from the field, the date-stamps that were originally pressed into the fresh concrete sidewalks, were collected throughout Vancouver with its area of 44 square miles and population of just over 600,000. (The greater Vancouver area, or Census Metropolitan Area, encompasses other adjacent municipalities for a total population of 2.3 million. None of these adjacent municipalities date-stamp their concrete sidewalks.)

The gathered data recorded the date of the concrete stamp, the North-South-East-West corner of the street intersection and the adjacent cross-street. As an example, Heather/W10th Ave; SW; 1911 refers to the south-west corner of the said intersection with the date-stamp occurring on Heather. It is important to note that the date-stamps were pressed into the fresh concrete sidewalks at the end of a block with an intersection with another avenue or street. The date-stamps are not at intersections with alleys nor in the middle of a block.

Concrete sidewalk date-stamps were observed and recorded approximately every third to fourth intersection; no attempt was made to collect every date-stamp. The date-stamps collected were from the first to the last decade of the twentieth century. Overall almost 800 concrete sidewalk date-stamp points were collected with approximately 95% from before 1960. The earliest date-stamps this author could find and record were from 1906.

2.2. Absence of field data

There are areas of Vancouver that no longer have concrete sidewalk date-stamps, specifically zoning areas Industrial I, IC, M, and MC; Commercial C1 to 8; and Multiple Dwelling RM (Vancouver Zoning & Development By-law 3575, 2012). The latter two zones are primarily the peninsula of the downtown which also encompasses the very densely populated West End. As huge commercial and/or residential towers were built replacing the original single-family houses, the original sidewalks were torn up. Only 37 concrete sidewalk stamps, dated from 1906 to 1911, were collected from these above mentioned now commercial and multiple dwelling zoned areas of Vancouver. The concrete date-stamps predominantly still exist throughout the city's continuing residential areas. (See Map 1)

However, there are some residential areas of Vancouver with no concrete sidewalk date-stamps. In 1911 the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) decided to build an exclusive area of elegant houses on greater than half acre properties, on the land granted to them in 1881, and named the area Shaughnessy after one of its Board of Directors. This ‘first’ Shaughnessy still has special zoning, FSD, (First Shaughnessy District) and although its concrete sidewalks were sometimes laid before concrete roads, none of its sidewalks have date-stamps. ‘Second’ and ‘third’ Shaughnessy, south of the original Shaughnessy with somewhat more modest homes, (Holdsworth, 1986; Sturges, 1997) also do not have sidewalk date-stamps. (Note Shaughnessy areas in Map 1.) There are also other occasional blocks in residential areas in Vancouver with no sidewalks at all.

2.3. Data from city of Vancouver Archives

Because the original sidewalks in the current commercial and multiple dwelling downtown core of Vancouver are gone, along with their date-stamps, original sidewalk construction data were collected from archival documents in the City of Vancouver Archives (CVA). The most useful archival holdings of CVA for this study were the Board of Works Minutes (1906–1911), Board of Works Annual Reports (1906–1911), City Engineer Reports, (Clement, 1906–1911) and City Council's Court of Revision Minutes (1906–1911). As the CVA only has some of the above original documents from 1906 onwards the [Vancouver] Daily-News Advertiser (on micro-film), published from 1886 to 1917, was used to read newspaper accounts of the Board of Works and City Engineer Reports from the early 1890s. All of the above were utilized to re-create the early original concrete sidewalks of Vancouver as shown in Map 3.

Utilizing the above sources, Vancouver's early concrete sidewalks were reconstructed for the current downtown, West End and south shore of Vancouver across False Creek. In addition to the location of concrete sidewalks built, the City Engineer annual summaries detailed the length of every sidewalk laid. In 1912 onwards though, the City Engineer annual reports no longer contained a list of concrete sidewalks constructed in a specific year so re-construction of Vancouver's early original sidewalks for this study ends in 1911.

3. Results

3.1. Field data and map construction

The City of Vancouver open data Streets package was laid on top of its 2009 Orthophoto imagery layer (Vancouver Open Data Catalogue, Streets Package and Orthophoto Imagery, 2009) and the collected 800 concrete date-stamp locations were entered into a GIS and a point layer created. A scale of 1:250 was employed when creating the point layer of date-stamps on the imagery layer as the sidewalks are clearly visible and therefore the GIS points could be placed on their respective specific sidewalks. Map 1 shows the distribution and spread of concrete sidewalks in Vancouver by using its date-stamps grouped by decade. (The date-stamps points by decade can be clicked on/off.)

3.2. Data from city of Vancouver Archives and GIS re-constructed sidewalks

As mentioned earlier, because Vancouver's original concrete sidewalks and date-stamps are mostly gone from its now commercial downtown and multi-dwelling high-rise core, lines to represent the early concrete sidewalks were drawn on top of the City of Vancouver road network and imagery layers. Although useful, the results were not visually compelling and more important, this writer did not want to ‘run the risk of misrepresenting reality’ by ‘redrawing the past on a … modern base map’ (Lafreniere & Rivet, 2010). Instead, a 1910 reproduction (because the original is torn and worn) of the Plan of the City of Vancouver (Herman & Burwell, 1910) was selected and the original concrete sidewalks, 1901–1904, and 1906 to 1911, respectively, were drawn on the map. Although the 1910 map displays an established road network, concrete sidewalks were limited at the time. These GIS re-constructed concrete sidewalk lines can be seen in Map 3.

4. Discussion

4.1. Predominant sidewalk date-stamps years

The year 1930 was the most prominent year of collected concrete sidewalk date-stamps. One hundred fifty-eight date-stamps are prior to 1929 and 95% of these are within the original Vancouver city boundaries (see Map 2). The collected sidewalk date stamps were laid over the Geological Survey of Canada Map number 1965 from 1923 to enforce that although the map shows streets and roads, concrete sidewalks were still limited circa 1923 (Map 2). Three hundred forty-five date-stamps from 1929 to 1932, accounted for almost half of the total 800 date-stamps, dated 1906–1992, collected. The number of date-stamps collected for the years 1929–1932 correlates with the miles of sidewalk laid for the same year (see Table 1).

Table 1. Mile of concrete sidewalks laid, data from annual ‘Vancouver City Engineer Reports, 1929–1932’.

Year	Collected sidewalk date-stamps	Miles of sidewalk (City Engineer reports)
1929	61	46
1930	139	107
1931	95	65
1932	38	27

This busy period of concrete sidewalk construction, 1929–1932, was a result of the amalgamation of Vancouver, Point Grey, and South Vancouver in 1929 and early make-work depression-era relief programs. (Roy, 1980; Vancouver Sun, 1930 )

4.2. Concrete sidewalk distribution

While landscape can affect street patterns (Mohajeri, French, & Batty, 2013) in the case of Vancouver, for the most part its streets were laid out in a rectilinear grid pattern (Hayes, 2005; Southworth & Ben-Joseph, 1997) and its original concrete sidewalk growth pattern was determined by proximity to the oceanfront and the presence of the CPR terminus which dictated the early growth areas of Vancouver. The decisions as to where and when concrete sidewalks were laid in the early developed areas were a result of interactions between businesses and citizens of Vancouver who petitioned for concrete sidewalks, the city's Board of Works, City Council and City Engineer. As an example from 1929, the City Engineer recommended in 1929 that as the ‘wood plank walk [was] in good condition … a concrete sidewalk in this section is not warranted at present’.

4.3. Limitations of using concrete sidewalks as an indicator of urban development

As in other urban areas of North America, wood plank sidewalks were the first sidewalks in Vancouver. In the current commercial multi-dwelling downtown core of Vancouver, which was the original business and residential area, wood plank sidewalks were built and used from 1886 onwards ( Daily News Advertiser, 1889 ; Vancouver Board of Works Minutes, 1886 ). Small sections of concrete sidewalks began to appear in the mid 1890s and block long concrete sidewalks were built in the 1900s ( Daily News Advertiser, 1893 ; Vancouver Board of Works Minutes, 1893 ). As Vancouver grew southward, eastward and westward in the 1920s onwards some residential areas originally had no sidewalks, then wood sidewalks, and finally concrete sidewalks. Wood sidewalks were still constructed in Vancouver in the 1920s and 1930s (Brackenridge, 1929). Thus Vancouver's concrete sidewalks and their historic distribution provide another, but not complete, observation of Vancouver's urban spatial development and expansion over time.

5. Conclusions

Map 1 utilizes Vancouver's concrete sidewalk date-stamps to show the spatial distribution of concrete sidewalks in the city for almost a century. As discussed briefly, atlases and maps over time show us the progression of roads and streets. However, the growth of a road network is one view of the development of an urban area. Thus specifically with the historic maps used in this study, Geological Survey of Canada, 1923 and Herman & Burwell, 1910, while both maps show an elaborate street network, concrete sidewalks were still limited as has been shown in Maps 2 and 3 at the respective time periods. Plotting Vancouver's concrete sidewalk date-stamps and the re-construction of Vancouver's early original concrete sidewalks in its current commercial downtown core using GIS delivers us with a year-by-year and street-by-street pattern of the development of Vancouver's concrete sidewalks and also provides us with another spatial view of Vancouver's historic urban built environment.

Software

Esri ArcMap 10.1 was used for this study, with Adobe Acrobat 9.5 employed to finalise the output PDF.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to John Frederick, University of Victoria, Special Collections, for photographing the 1910 Plan of Vancouver. Thank you to Peter Peller, University of Calgary, and Tom Anderson, Alberta Archives, for reading drafts of this paper. Thanks to Ken Josephson, Cartographer, University of Victoria Geography Department for map suggestions. Special thanks to Ken Smith, Editor, and the referees for very useful feedback.