The North Shore Heritage Society is celebrating heritage week with with the theme “Where do you find Heritage?”
Below is an excerpt from an article about Grand Boulevard.
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Happy Heritage Week 2021 with the theme “Where do you find Heritage?”
Our second stop is Grand Boulevard, which is a neighbourhood and a park that is bounded by East Keith Road to the south and East 18th to the north.
It is an example of an area that has evolved over time and has landmarks from many different eras.
The park is on the CNV Heritage Register. The park was part of a large plot of forested land originally owned by North Vancouver Land & Improvement Company.
In 1906, the Land & Improvement Company started planning a new sub-division called Grand Boulevard, which would consist of a large, centralized park (gifted to the City) that would be cleared to act as a fire break, would be sloped to ensure prime views down to the water and would be planted in a style reminiscent of a fine European garden.
The plan came to fruition, and today you can still see some of the original plantings, such as Purple Japanese Maples Acer on Grand Boulevard between 18th and 19th Streets, and the Katsura Tree at the northwest corner of Grand Boulevard and 17th Street.
But Grand Boulevard is so much more than a park.
The original development company divided the land on either side of the park into large double lots with a requirement to build homes that cost more than $4000 to build, in order to ensure a high-class residential neighbourhood.
To read more, go to the society’s website.
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A truly Grand idea, that today we reap the rewards of, thank-you to the 1906 North Vancouver Land and Development Company for the vision that became Grand Boulevard.
Fast forward to 2021 and we have a City and it’s assets, it’s planning – so poorly managed that “Council” and the “Team at the Hall” feel that selling off our Parks and Rec. land (Harry Jerome Rec Centre), is what you do to pay for things. It seems that present-day City of North Vancouver applies “Zero Vision” moving forward, adding residents and densifying to an extreme whilst reducing open space and park land.
I’ll paraphrase former Mayor Mussatto in saying- “we can always use the sidewalks to play on!”