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The West End neighbourhood has always been characterized by a diversity of housing types, particularly low- and mid-rise apartment buildings. The highrise agglomeration prominently portrayed in postcard shots from English Bay Beach is a comparably recent phenomena; the mountainous skyline began vertical development in the 1960s after the BC Electric Building at Burrard and Nelson paved the way for a less restrictive building height framework.
The physical evolution of the cityscape is palpable when we look at a view of the skyline from 1967. The 28-storey Panorama Place on Pendrell Street forms the highest peak in the skyline. Completed in 1965, the 147-unit apartment tower is rivalled only by another highrise slab on Nelson Street. Meanwhile the 1912-built Sylvia Hotel — originally constructed as an apartment building and converted into an apartment hotel in 1936 — proudly stands at the right side of the image. On the opposite side stood the Englesea Lodge, built in 1911 according to a design by William White, the same architect responsible for the Sylvia Hotel.
The current view of the skyline from the beach tells a much different story. Multiple more highrises have popped up along Beach Avenue, including a green-glassed condominium complex at Gilford Street and the 19-storey Huntington West tower built in 1996. A row of mature trees obscures the lower levels of the Sylvia Hotel, which, though without its rooftop signage, remains a neighbourhood icon.
But perhaps the biggest change along the manicured shoreline is the loss of the Englesea Lodge. A long strip of houses that hugged Beach Avenue had already mostly vanished by 1967, leaving the seven-storey brick building the only surviving privately owned residential property along this stretch of the waterfront. The City had acquired most of the shoreline properties and cleared the homes away to return the site to parkland. The City would finally purchase the Englesea Lodge in 1967 and eight years later set in motion plans to demolish the building. The aging structure was seen as a blight on the landscape by the parks board, though it meant stable and affordable housing to the community. As a local battle to save the building raged on, with the City considering adapting it into senior's housing, a sudden fire destroyed the structure in 1981. Left gutted, the building was demolished, and the quest for a contiguous park along the waterfront was accomplished.
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