Architecture · Gould & Champney · 1911
An elaborate granite base, a plainer terracotta shaft, and a light classical steel cornice — Beaux-Arts training applied to a boomtown office block.
The Style
Heritage scholar Edward Mills described the Rogers Building’s design as “of the modern French Renaissance,” reflecting the Beaux-Arts training of architects Augustus Warren Gould and Édouard Frère Champney. Like Gould’s earlier American Savings Bank and Empire Building in Seattle, it composes the façade in three parts: an elaborate ground-floor base, a plainer intermediate shaft, and an elegant, light classical cornice.
Where the Seattle bank used plain Doric columns, the Vancouver building answers with a pair of grand pink granite Ionic columns — with pilasters of the same stone defining the other ground-floor bays. Above, cream glazed terracotta rises eight storeys to a galvanized steel cornice with dentils, egg-and-dart moulding, and lion heads.
The structure behind the skin was the real news in 1911: a steel skeleton with poured concrete infill — “the latest ideas of reinforced concrete construction and the first ten storey of its kind in Canada,” as the Daily Province put it.
Base · Shaft · Capital
A light classical crown of galvanized steel — dentils, egg-and-dart, and lion heads.
Eight plainer storeys of cream glazed terracotta, the vertical body of the building.
An elaborate ground floor of rose granite Ionic columns and the carved name.
Look Closely
Select a feature of the building to read it the way a conservator does.
Read the Façade
Over the entrance, the name is carved the Roman way: 1911 · ROGERS · BVILDING · 1911, with a V standing in for U and interpuncts between the words. It is signature, date stamp, and typography lesson in one.
Look Closely
Notice how the letters are cut into the glazed terracotta blocks themselves — the name is not applied to the building; it is part of the skin.
Follow the Light
Before electric light was cheap and bright, daylight was infrastructure. Gould & Champney cut a 24-foot well into the plan so that all of the building’s roughly 342 offices had a window on the sky. Air was washed through falling water — cooled in summer, warmed by steam in winter.
Step Inside
Two original stairways of white Italian marble survive, with polished brass rails, leading from Granville Street to the businesses below.
The building’s systems were as advanced as its finishes: air filtered through falling water — cooled in summer, heated by steam in winter — two 150-horsepower Babcock & Wilcox boilers, and five Otis-Fensom elevators with a “flash-light indicator” showing car positions. Amenities included a full basement cafeteria, a barbershop, and dedicated women’s facilities with tea service and an attendant.
Material Stories
Every material in the building makes the same case: this city is permanent. To trace where each one travelled from, follow the Materials Atlas on the Boomtown Vancouver page.
The entire upper façade — and the carved inscription over the door
Moulded in Chicago and shipped in fifteen carloads, glazed terracotta could be cast into rich detail and gave the building a refined, self-washing skin.
A boomtown could order a landmark’s worth of ornament from a catalogue two thousand miles away — and afford to.
Conservation Glaze crazing and joint failure let water in; terracotta needs regular inspection and skilled repair.
The monumental Ionic columns and pilasters at the ground floor
Rose-grey granite from Aberdeen, Scotland — an ocean’s journey to hold up a doorway, and a statement that this corner was permanent.
Vancouver’s trade routes ran everywhere the Empire’s ships did.
Conservation Granite is nearly immortal, but its joints, fixings, and adjacent paving need care.
The hallways and two surviving stairways; further marbles at the ground floor
White Italian marble — with stone from Alaska, Vermont, and Tennessee — made the interiors cool, permanent, and public-facing.
Prestige in 1912 was measured in materials polished daily by thousands of hands.
Conservation A century of footsteps wears treads hollow; worn marble is repaired, not replaced, to keep the record of use.
The entrance doors on Granville Street
Solid bronze doors cost $2,500 in 1912 — the price of a house, spent on a threshold.
The entrance was the handshake of a commercial building; Rogers made it unforgettable.
Conservation Bronze wants patina, not polish-throughs: conservation means gentle, consistent care.
Stair balustrades, the fire escapes in the light well, and the cornice
Ornamental iron from Minneapolis and St. Paul dressed the stairs; a galvanized steel cornice with lions and dentils crowned the building without crushing weight.
Steel made both the height and the crown possible — structure and theatre from the same material.
Conservation Coatings fail invisibly; iron and steel need paint systems renewed before rust blooms.
The vaulted ceiling of the elevator lobby
Gold leaf turned the everyday act of waiting for an elevator into an event.
Even circulation space was designed to declare confidence.
Conservation Gilding is fragile; cleaning and re-leafing are specialist crafts.
The 24-foot well at the heart of the horseshoe plan
Before cheap, bright electric lighting, daylight was infrastructure: the U-shaped plan gave every one of ~342 offices a window on the sky.
The most important material in the building cost nothing — and shaped everything.
Conservation Protecting the light well means resisting the temptation to fill it in.
Look Up
The Rogers Building belongs to the family of glazed terracotta office buildings that gave early Vancouver its first skyline: steel-and-concrete frames dressed in classical ornament, built in the five furious years before the First World War. From the sidewalk at Granville and Pender you can still read the whole grammar — granite base, terracotta shaft, steel cornice — and the carved name that dates it twice: 1911 · ROGERS · BVILDING · 1911.