What do you think?
Rate this book
Unbuilt Victoria
For most people, resident and visitor alike, Victoria, British Columbia, is a time capsule of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. From a modest fur-trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company it grew to be the province's major trading centre. Then the selection of Vancouver as the terminus of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s, followed by a smallpox epidemic that closed the port in the 1890s, resulted in decline.
Victoria succeeded in reinventing itself as a tourist destination, based on the concept of nostalgia for all things English, stunning scenery, and investment opportunities. In the modernizing boom after the Second World War attempts were made to move the city's built environment into the mainstream, but the prospect of Victoria's becoming like any other North American city did not win public approval.
Unbuilt Victoria examines some of the architectural plans that were proposed but rejected. That some of them were ever dreamed of will probably amaze, that others never made it might well be a matter of regret.
Victoria succeeded in reinventing itself as a tourist destination, based on the concept of nostalgia for all things English, stunning scenery, and investment opportunities. In the modernizing boom after the Second World War attempts were made to move the city's built environment into the mainstream, but the prospect of Victoria's becoming like any other North American city did not win public approval.
Unbuilt Victoria examines some of the architectural plans that were proposed but rejected. That some of them were ever dreamed of will probably amaze, that others never made it might well be a matter of regret.
248 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 2012
1 person is currently reading
9 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 2, 2019
A reasonably interesting almost-coffee-table book.
There are many reasons why things don’t get built in what a local columnist has called “Dysfunction-by-the-Sea,” one being that Victoria is just one municipality in a collection of thirteen, and not even the largest. But if this collection of buildings and other projects are anything to go by that’s quite fortunate. A large number of them - ungainly oversized blocks of various shapes - date from the depressingly brutalist post-WW2 period. At the time Victoria was a provincial backwater, economically depressed, and in no position to carry out much urban renewal. By far the worst was a plan to encircle the downtown and inner harbour with a huge freeway ring; it would have desolated the city centre.
Read this and rejoice in dysfunction!
There are many reasons why things don’t get built in what a local columnist has called “Dysfunction-by-the-Sea,” one being that Victoria is just one municipality in a collection of thirteen, and not even the largest. But if this collection of buildings and other projects are anything to go by that’s quite fortunate. A large number of them - ungainly oversized blocks of various shapes - date from the depressingly brutalist post-WW2 period. At the time Victoria was a provincial backwater, economically depressed, and in no position to carry out much urban renewal. By far the worst was a plan to encircle the downtown and inner harbour with a huge freeway ring; it would have desolated the city centre.
Read this and rejoice in dysfunction!
Displaying 1 of 1 review