The spring of 1911 was a busy time in New Westminster as is clearly evident in a column of small community references in the local paper. Sometimes researchers find valuable information with names, dates and details in little articles rather than in a major piece. We noted the following in the British Columbian newspaper.
The B.C. Electric Railway (BCER) streetcar station was being constructed on Columbia at Eighth Street. The article pointed out that the roof had just been completed and that “the new building gives a business like appearance to lower Columbia Street.” This building is today’s Salvation Army Thrift Store on Hyack Square.
The Cliff Block was quite new in 1911, and this building, still there half a block off Columbia up Sixth Street, was reported as the new home to many doctors and dentists.
Third Street between Royal and Sixth avenues was the focus of much activity that was expected to last about three months. The job, which entailed grading the street, included “the assistance of the steam shovel” and “the City Engineer had started a gang of about thirty men on the work.” This would have meant a dusty summer for the residents of this part of town.
Downtown, just along the block from the BCER station, one of the hotels had been undergoing changes, which, we might surmise, were prompted by the new streetcar terminal and the many passengers the line would be carrying. The hotel was the Central, and we learn that its front had been improved. “The old front has been taken out and a new one put in and a bootblack stand and an up-to-date cigar stand are now located on each side of the hotel entrance.”
Big news in downtown New Westminster at this time in the early 1900s was the soon-to-be-constructed Westminster Trust Building. The structure, a skyscraper in its day, was to be built at Columbia at Begbie Street, where it is still a prominent edifice today. In 1911 this would be an enormous change in the city and especially in the downtown. The work was now becoming a reality, as the paper noted: “the work of tearing down the old brick row at Columbia at Begbie Street has begun.”
There was also some activity in the area far up the hillside on Eighth Street near Sixth Avenue. A couple of business buildings near that corner continued in that location into at least the early 1970s. In 1911 the major new structure, the Hardman block, was about to be home to a drugstore operated by D.M. Copeland.
The newspaper reference also fills in other Hardman block activity and identifies the owner. “There is already in the block a bakery and an ice cream parlour, and Mr. Hardman opened up his hardware shop there some time ago.”
