The first Granville Street Bridge opened on Jan. 4, 1889, which was 130 years ago Friday.
North Arm refers to the north arm of the Fraser River. According to a Feb. 21, 1953, Province story, the CPR had promised to build the North Arm Road if the city constructed a bridge. The CPR’s motives weren’t altruistic — the company’s main land grant in Vancouver was south of False Creek on today’s west side. But the city complied, hoping to open up commerce with the farms in Richmond.
Matthews was an eccentric fellow who would often annotate old photos with his distinctive scrawl. Modern-day archivists would blanch at his approach, but Matthews’ musings give old photos a little je ne sais quoi. And they’re quite informative.
Matthews reported the bridge was 2,400 feet long, stretched from Beach Avenue downtown to Third Avenue in Fairview and cost $16,000 to build. It looks pretty rudimentary in the archives photo, barely rising above the water on a forest of piles sunk into False Creek.
A print of the Granville Street Bridge photo in The Province files is in better shape than the original glass negative in the Vancouver Archives.
The bridge was largely made of wood and was in the Howe-truss design style.
It was a drawbridge, opening in the middle so ships could pass through to the industries operating on the creek.
Nine-year-old Mundy Oppenheimer (the nephew of Mayor David Oppenheimer) was given the honour of pulling the level to officially open the draw. It took three minutes to open, but two minutes to close. The lever was then moved to another hole “connecting with more rapidly moving machinery” that opened it in a mere minute and seven seconds.
The Vancouver Archives owns the glass-plate negative for the print in The Province files, and somebody has written “approx. Dec. 1888” on it. The photo is uncredited, but it may have been done by Charles Bailey, who photographed the opening ceremonies.
If you zoom in on the photo you can spot several men standing on top of the bridge’s swing span, including a couple of guys who climbed to the top of a four-storey tower. Many appear to be workers, probably from the crew that built the bridge in only four months.
A closeup of the photo of the first Granville Street Bridge shows several men posing on the bridge.
As Vancouver boomed the bridge quickly proved to be too small. In the fall of 1891 streetcar trestles were erected on either side of the bridge, but the main span was still too narrow and the city replaced it with a larger bridge that opened on Sept. 6, 1909.
The first Granville Street Bridge was torn down only 20 years after it opened. But the second bridge was too small as well, and was replaced by the current bridge, which opened on Feb. 4, 1954.
Postcard of the second Granville Street Bridge, probably 1910s. The bridge was built in 1909 and torn down in 1954, and a new Granville Street Bridge was constructed.
Feb. 8, 1954. Part of a crowd of 5,000 who showed up to cross the third Granville Street Bridge on opening day.
Feb. 12, 1936. Portrait of Vancouver’s first city archivist, Major J.S. Matthews, by George T. Wadds. The print has been touched up so it would reproduce better in a newspaper.