Englesea Lodge was a brick apartment building at 2046 Beach Avenue. [The address sometimes appeared as 2044 Beach Avenue.]
There is one reference to this property in Heritage Vancouver’s database of Vancouver Building Permits: http://permits.heritagevancouver.org/ [searched March 3, 2018].
| District: | Vancouver |
| Permit: | |
| Owner: | Davidson, Annie |
| Architect: | White, W. P. |
| Builder: | Cook, E. |
| Legal Address: | DL: 185 Block: 71 Sub: Resub: Lot: 24-25 |
| Date (Y-M-D): | 1911-09-28 |
| Street Number: | 2044 |
| Street Name: | Beach Avenue |
| Value: | $115,000.00 |
| Remarks: | Brick apartments |
| Reference ID: | VN-3200-3201-2640 |
The name on the building permit was Annie Davidson, who was the wife of Augustus Alexander Davidson. [Further information appears on the page for Augustus Alexander Davidson (1862-1950): https://westendvancouver.wordpress.com/biographies-a-m/biographies-d/davidson-augustus-alexander-1862-1950/.]
For many years Englesea Lodge was a respectable West End address, especially for people who were in Vancouver only for a short while, or for people who were waiting for the completion of a new house elsewhere in the city.
When Englesea Lodge was built, there were still several houses and other buildings on the beach side of Beach Avenue. Gradually, however, the Vancouver Park Board and City of Vancouver officials took steps to acquire the properties on the beach side, allowing the properties to become part of a waterfront park.
Englesea Lodge was the last remaining building on the shoreline. In 1967, the city bought the property for $375,000, and by the late 1970s the city council had voted to demolish the building. After some years of protest and delay, the city was preparing to make its final decision on the building’s fate.
On February 1, 1981, a mysterious fire destroyed the building, allowing the whole shoreline to become a park as the park board had desired.
Sources
Englesea Lodge – Beach Avenue; Changing Vancouver, https://changingvancouver.wordpress.com/2016/10/03/englesea-lodge-beach-avenue/.
This Week in History: 1967; by John Mackie; Vancouver Sun, February 28, 2014, page A2, columns 3-6 [Englesea Lodge].
Buildings on the beach side of Beach Avenue, by Sue Bigelow, http://www.vancouverarchives.ca/2013/05/10/buildings-on-the-beach-side-of-beach-avenue/ [includes photograph and references to Englesea Lodge].
Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada; 1800 to 1950; William P. White (1862 -1932); http://dictionaryofarchitectsincanada.org/node/370: “Englesea Lodge, Beach Avenue, 1911 (Vancouver & Victoria Architecturally, 1911, illus.); Beach Avenue, near Stanley Park, apartment block for A.A. Davidson, 1912 (Province [Vancouver], 30 March 1912, 48, illus. & descrip.).”
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