The Vancouver Special is proof that if you stick around long enough, somebody is bound to appreciate you.
After four decades of ridicule, the two-level boxy stucco-clad houses are officially getting their due. The Vancouver Heritage Foundation has recognized the Special as the most popular style of house design in the city's history.
It is believed there are tens of thousands of them. Although the official tally is not yet in, foundation spokeswoman Elana Zysblat believes the Vancouver Special outnumbers any Victorian, Craftsman, or 1950s-era bungalow or rancher.
Most important, unlike the other house styles, with their British and California influences, the Special is uniquely the city's.
To recognize its status, the foundation recently hosted a public discussion of the Special that pulled more than 100 fans through its doors. It was followed a few days later by a tour of Lakewood Residence, a Special that is considered the first to be extensively renovated by an architect.
Heritage Vancouver also plans to launch the first-ever Vancouver Special tour this fall. Ms. Zysblat already has a list of house participants.
Vancouverites might not have thought they'd live to see the day, but it has happened: The Special has become cool.
"It's inevitable," says Ms. Zysblat, the programming co-ordinator for the heritage foundation. "There is a group of people out there looking specifically for Vancouver Specials. People have started catching on to how workable they are — so they're not the cheapest house on the block any more."
The affordable houses were built between 1965 and 1985, an inexpensive, easy-to-build response to the needs of new immigrant families. With the exception of a few neighbourhoods, the houses were built in almost every part of the city. They were designed to look like mini-Mediterranean mansions, with faux brick and stone cladding, wrought-iron balcony railings, and little lions or pineapple statues mounted on each side of the entrance gate.
"It's a vernacular building," says Ms. Zysblat. "It was not designed to be anyone's dream home. And no other buildings are so pure to our direct needs."
Many Specials have already been torn down, but part of the drive to protect them is rooted in the environmental movement. With so many of the houses still standing, Ms. Zysblat says it would be difficult to imagine the environmental impact of tossing them all in the landfill. In other words, the city condoned the mass building of them, and now they're here to stay.
"The city has to take responsibility for this vast stock of buildings that we have, and find ways to encourage people to preserve them, and keep the general envelope."
Ms. Zysblat says the houses are not such a pox on the landscape, anyway. The design is unpretentious and straightforward in the way of modernist architecture, which makes it useful to a broad cross-section, she says.
"It's designed to be functional. It doesn't hide the materials it's made of. It's passed the test of time, because they were relevant at the beginning of the '60s, and they are still relevant today.
"I'm starting to appreciate how attractive they are and how easily they are personalized," Ms. Zysblat says. "You can paint the veranda, you can change the windows, you can do cosmetic, inexpensive things to the house.
"It fits in with the retro trend that we have now, and just by neutralizing the materials and taking away contrast and colour, it is very easily made current, and that's one of the attractive things about it. Without hiring an architect or interior designer, people can make their own cosmetic updates."
Vancouver intern architect Stephanie Robb spotted the potential of her Special long before anybody else did.
Ms. Robb, who spoke at the Heritage Vancouver presentation, is considered a pioneer within the circuit since she extensively renovated her home in 2001. It is now known as the Lakewood Residence, and Heritage Vancouver offered a tour of it recently.
Her house has expansive windows and sleeker, more contemporary lines than the traditional Special.
Ms. Robb specifically chose her future home because it had sat on the market for months and was therefore good value. As well, she appreciated its simplicity.
"I thought, 'There is a good house that's easy to understand — it's solid and square and in good shape,'" she says.
They are practical because of their floor plan, which is naturally divided into upper and lower, self-enclosed living spaces. It is easy to convert the house into an informal duplex, or use one half for an office or in-law space. They usually have large garden spaces as well, which are as distinctive and practical as the living space itself.
"It's right on topic for the times that we're in," Ms. Robb says of their newfound status.
Nobody knows as much about the Vancouver Special as artist Keith Higgins, an arts administrator who is a serious proponent of the structures. Since 2001, he has maintained an unusual on-line taxonomy of the city's Specials that documents each house's characteristics. So far, he has photographed and documented 1,241 of them on his website, vancouverspecial.com .
"To a lot of people, they are a crime against humanity," he says. "A lot of very vocal people see them as the plague that will destroy your neighbourhood.
"But I think there is a certain amount of hipster interest in them," he notes. "One of the great things about them is … if you have modernist furniture that you bought second hand or replicas or whatever, you can clear out all the walls and have the big open space where that stuff looks absolutely fabulous."
Aesthetics aside, he appreciates their cultural relevance, too. Unlike the Shaughnessy craftsman mansion, the Vancouver Special represents the working-class immigrant whose story is usually overlooked. "They contain a history of people who are normally not found in history books," Mr. Higgins says.
Special to The Globe and Mail
