Sam Kee Building

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The front facade of the Sam Kee Building with its shops
The narrow side of the building (up to about the rain pipe), here on the corner of Shanghai Alley
The building shortly after its construction at the beginning of the 20th century

The Sam Kee Building (now also known as Jack Chow Insurance ) is a listed, commercial building in the western part of Vancouver's Chinatown since 2003 . Located at 8 West Pender Street by Millennium Gate , it was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's narrowest commercial building.

architecture

The building has two floors above street level and is around 1.5 meters deep. Almost all of the bay windows on the second floor expand the usable area. They have sloping ceilings and a central gable. The roof parapet of the building contains a semicircular central element with the inscription of the year of construction, "1913". The front of the building is generously glazed; the narrow side walls of the house only have an arched window on the ground floor. Below the property there is a cellar that extends under the sidewalk. A bathhouse was originally operated here; a barber also worked there. To obtain light in these basement rooms, glass blocks were embedded in the surface of the footpath; it is therefore referred to as a “glass sidewalk”.

history

The wealthy builder of the building was Chang Toy, also called Sam Kee (1857–1921). The Chinese immigrated to British Columbia as a worker in 1874 . From the beginning of the 1880s he ran the successful Sam Kee Company in Vancouver , which imported rice from China and exported fish to Asian countries. Toy owned a piece of land in Vancouver's Chinatown, which he had to sell in large part to the city of Vancouver at the beginning of the 20th century so that the Pender Street located there could be widened. The purchase price of $ 40,000 paid by the city was perceived as too low and discriminatory by the owner who had immigrated from Asia. Out of annoyance, Toy accepted a bet and in 1912 was able to win over the architecture firm Bryan and Gillam for a construction project on the remaining land. The architects designed the narrow commercial building on the basis of a steel frame construction. Shops were set up on the ground floor, and office and living spaces were created on the upper floor. The building was completed in 1913, and within a short time 13 companies established their headquarters here. The basement baths were the only hot-water baths in Chinatown in their time.

In 1966 the Birmingham and Wood architects bought the property and set up their office here. Insurance broker Jack Chow bought the building in need of renovation in 1985. He refurbished the property with the help of a loan from the City of Vancouver. Today his son runs Jack Chow Insurance here .

Web links

Commons : Sam Kee Building  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Registered as Historic Site of Canada since January 14, 2003 under No. 2814 , according to Igor I. Solar, Chinese Canadians, Sam Kee and the Shallowest Commercial Building in: Digitaljourney.com on January 30, 2013
  2. ↑ shallowest commercial building in the world . Two other buildings are described as the world's narrowest commercial properties: the Skinny Building in Pittsburgh and the William G. Singer Building in Philadelphia .
  3. ↑ a b Martha Perkins, Expect a little magic at world's narrowest building , December 3, 2013, Westender
  4. ↑ Timothy J. Stanley, Chang Toy in Dictionary of Canadian Biography , Volume 15, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 2003

Coordinates: 49 ° 16 ′ 49.5 "  N , 123 ° 6 ′ 16.9"  W.