175 Water Street
This building was given a permit in 1903 as 171 Water Street, when Oscar Brown hired J M McLuckie to design and build a single storey warehouse. His fruit and vegetable business moved in, and adopted 175 Water as the address. In 1913 the same company hired F H Rayner to add two more storeys. By that point Oscar Brown himself had much less involvement with the fruit and vegetable business that occupied the building.
He arrived in Vancouver in 1899, aged 23, and was initially in partnership as Brown and McGregor. He had arrived from California, having been involved in the orange growing business in Riverside before moving here. He became sole proprietor after a couple of years, and retired to California having sold the business in 1913. Initially he had premises on the northeast corner of Abbott and Water Street, suspended on piles over the beach.
He was an investor in other property, including a building on Powell Street (where we looked at his biography). In Vancouver he had health challenges, and was advised to return to a warmer climate, so moved to Santa Barbara where he died in a motor car accident in 1928, when he was 53. He apparently never married. US Census records say he had been born in Arkansas, (and when he died he had a sister living there, in the Ozarks), but his obitiary said he was from St Louis, Montana.
In 1914 Richard Marpole was running the business (and hoping somebody picked up a pearl heart brooch lost on Hastings Street). A year later a french bulldog was lost here, answering to the name of ‘Chunky’. He was obviously returned, as Mr. Marpole was looking for him again in June 1917. Richards’s father, also called Richard, died in 1920. He left an estate worth over half a million dollars, including this building which was valued at $43,000. Two thirds of the estate was left to his son (with the other third in trust to his grandchildren). Richard stayed as president of Oscar Brown, but also had a coal business under his own name.
In 1936 Oscar Brown Co operated from 165 Water (which we think was the store in this building, operating under a new street address), and the BC Coast Vegetable Marketing Board were in the upper floors, at 175. Harry Paterson worked for the board, which got into a dispute with Chung Chuck and Mah Lai of Ladner, who grew potatoes. He stopped the Chinese growers on the Fraser avenue bridge (baton in hand) and seized their potatoes, heading to a Vancouver warehouse for export (but not through the Marketing Board, who the growers found ‘unsatisfactory’). The courts granted an injunction preventing the Board from interfering in the export.
In our 1973 image Gastown was being reinvented as a retail area, rather than a warehouse district, and the main floor had the Dresser Drawer Boutique, selling Mexican silver, hand-tooled leather and imported dresses and kaftans. It was replaced by the Calico Cat, a gift store. The office space upstairs was renovated in 1984, and today the store is Michelle’s Import Plus, selling souvenirs, t-shirts and gifts for the visitor market, while upstairs there are law offices and a finance company.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 1095-08060
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