The Flack Block – Hastings Street at Cambie, Vancouver, British Columbia

The Flack Block – a heritage treasure fallen into disrepair – was built in 1898 by Thomas Flack, one of the first prospectors to strike it rich in the Klondike Gold Rush – and not to lose his fortune in the saloons and brothels of Dawson City. Located at the commercial centre of the city and across from the first courthouse, the Flack Block was the original home to the Bank of Vancouver.

Vancouver subsequently became the main supply center for those headed to the gold fields in the Yukon. Barristers, insurance agents and mining brokers took office in the stone building and it became home to the original Bank of Vancouver. Gold dealers, retailers selling mining supplies, and even jewelers inhabited the building, making use of the 10 or so massive gold vaults dotted throughout the various floors. In later years it hosted men’s clothier E.A. Lee.

The Flack Block was constructed in the Romanesque Revival commercial style, with a rough-dressed stone facade, round-arched windows and twinned columns. Its crowning glory was a massive 20-ft. sandstone arch at its entry, emblazoned with the building’s name and number. Based on heavy twin pediments, the arch was further distinguished with a pair of relief-sculpture griffins at its outer corners, gargoyle faces in the pediments and other intricate and detailed carved-stone ornamentation.

Hastings Street was prized as Vancouver’s primary commercial and shopping street until the first half of the 20th century, when the entire area began falling on hard times. The 1950s, besides writing finis to the district’s streetcar service, also ushered in the growth of new suburban shopping malls, and by the 1990s, Hastings Street around Victory Square declined, it became home to a series of pawnshops and varied illegal activities.

All these unfortunate developments were reflected in the deteriorated face of the Flack Block. Sandstone tends to weather badly, and the building’s once commanding facade was showing its age by the late 20th century; worse, its mighty sculpted archway had been completely removed long before, leaving behind an unimpressive blank. The rest of the ground level had turned into a patchwork of inappropriate windows, doors, stucco cladding and other materials, as it was continually remodeled into the ground-floor storefronts of enterprises that ultimately failed.

In the last few years, The entrance was recarved by local artisans using Indiana limestone to replicate the original as preserved in vintage photographs.