Another West Vancouver Significant Home Demolition


Dan White House Orchard Way West Vancouver image stacy reynaud

I'm in a dysfunctional relationship - with West Vancouver. I moved out of West Van in July. I was getting too bitter about the clash of ideas concerning housing, being ripped off in rent, and all the bloody traffic on Marine Drive. Well, I'm moving back. 


Turns out I'm not the only one that's getting fed up, though:


West Vancouver Council moved unanimously to commence community consultation and draft a bylaw addressing form and character in West Vancouver homes. Jeremy Shepherd, North Shore News. 


You can watch the 'boisterous' council meeting on video and read the full meeting agenda from October 20th here.


Thanks to Brent Richter's Twitter feed for bringing this meeting to my attention.


I touched on this topic in February 2014  when West Van held its first public Info Session. What came from the Info Sessions were recommendations from West Vancouver's Manager of Community Planning, Stephen Mikicich. You can read those recommendations from June 2014 here.


So, back to the title of the post. Which significant home is gone? Well, it's Dan White's Vernacular Orchard Way home that I've posted many times about (search Dan White at the top of the search box). Mr. White is also the architect the Museum of Vancouver just finished a retrospective on.


I can't help but see the correlation between what's happening in West Vancouver and what Alan Weintraub and Alan Hess discuss in their book Forgotten Modern: California Houses 1940-1970.


Except for a few hometown architects (Whitney Smith, Harwell Hamilton Harris) and a few stray writers and professors (Jean Murray Bangs, Jack Hillmer, Esther McCoy), almost no one knew of them, [Charles and Henry Greene], except as relics of the past (Hess 2007, 8).


Dan White's Orchard Way Vernacular once stood here.

view from Mathers Ave.