Sunday, April 29, 2012

Royal Jubilee South Block - a TC article says it is 122 years old

Now that the new patient tower is open at Royal Jubliee Hospital, VIHA is taking down some of the existing buildings.   Specifically the South East and Centre Blocks are being deconstructed at the moment.   The South Block seems to be the original building of the hospital which in the TC article it says it was built in 1890.  If it is really from 1890, why was there no move to protect it?

I admit I was not paying attention, but I really have to wonder why none of the heritage advocates were when it came to protecting this building?   The Victoria Heritage Foundation has a bit about the hospital on their page about Jubilee history, which on a old photo of the hospital seems to indicate all the original buildings were demolished years ago.

Looking at this picture of the one of the blocks being taken down right now, I am not sure what era it is from.   Looking at old picture of the hospital, I can not reconcile these blocks being as old as the article says they are.

What is going on the site of these buildings?   A parking lot, nothing more than expanding the existing parking lot a bit.
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2 comments:

  1. Caleb Horn3:36 pm

    Hi Bernard,
    I'm not sure why the T.C. published an article with seemingly incorrect dates. Published VIHA documents suggest a much more likely scenario. The South and East blocks were both built in 1921, with an additional storey added sometime in the 1940s. The Central Block was built in 1929, but I'm not sure when the TD clinic addition was built.

    The oldest building that still remains on the site is old Pemberton Theatre operating room (located in the open area behind the new PCC). It was built in 1896 and is indeed protected. Also protected is the chapel on site, built in 1909.

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  2. Bernard4:00 pm

    Those dates seem much more in sync with the look and feel of the buildings. I could not find dates in the VIHA stuff, I find VIHA's web presence to be more about hiding information that making it easily available

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