2409 Main Street
The Main Street part of this retail store and apartments (the part that’s in this image) were developed in 1910 by J B Mathers, who hired A J Bird to design the building, and C S Gustafson to build it. Mr. Mathers invested $30,000 in the building. Two years later he developed the Wenonah, a three-storey building a few blocks to the south, designed by W P White of Seattle. We looked at that building a while ago, and researched the developer’s history. He hired the same architect to add to the back of this building too, on East 8th.
Mr. Mathers was from Ontario, born there in 1863. By 1895 he was a lumber merchant in Manitoba where he married Joanna Morrow, and they arrived in Vancouver in 1901. He became a financial broker, and accumulated property and directorships in the city. He built a brick and stone building on West Hastings in 1904, the same year as his West End house. By 1913 he was President of the Trustee Company of Vancouver, Ltd. and a director of an insurance company, a quarrying business, a cannery and the West Vancouver Land Co.
He continued to own this building, with $4,000 in repairs in 1920. There were permits to him for $7,000 of repairs and alteratons in 1928 built by Mr. Howard, and two for $1,500 by Dixon & Murray and $1,325 by A. B. Cushing Mills a month later. Mr. Mathers died in 1936 while visiting San Diego.
There are a number of other images of the building in the Archives; in 1937 F W Woolworth and Co occupied the southern half (having first set up here in 1929), and G Percival, ‘Dry Goods, Ready to Wear’ had the northern half.
By 1978 Woolworth had taken the whole store, as can be seen in our 1992 image. Today it’s home to a clothing store, 8th & Main, with 12 apartments on the upper floor.
In earlier versions of the plan for Broadway and Main, older commercial buildings like this were limited in terms of their redevelopment potential. The arrival of SkyTrain along Broadway and new Transit Oriented Development requirements means this site is more likely to be redeveloped.
Image sources: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 332-25 and CVA 99-5010
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