How to find the history of a Vancouver house

1. Check what stands there today

Start with today's address. The City's property records give a year built for every building (BC Assessment's figure, close but not exact for old houses) and say whether the building is on the Vancouver Heritage Register. If the year is after the 1940s, the house you're looking for may be gone, and the history is the lot's.

2. Read the city directories, year by year

From the 1880s to 1955 a directory came out almost every year. Canvassers walked each street and wrote down who lived at each door. The Vancouver Public Library has scanned them. Open a year, find the street section (streets A to Z, each address in order) and read down to your number. Then look the name up in the name section, which gives the person's job and employer. Start with a recent year and work back: the year your address first appears is a good clue to when the house went up.

3. Look out for the traps

House numbers changed, so a run of years can stop and pick up at another number. Spellings change from one year to the next. Many Chinese, Japanese and other residents weren't named: the canvassers printed “Chinese”, “Orientals” or “Foreigners” instead. A listing records who the canvasser found at the door, not who owned the house. From 1935 a * after a number means a member of the family owned the property, as far as the directory knew.

4. See the house on the 1912 map

Goad's 1912 fire insurance map draws every lot and building in the city, coloured by what it was built of (yellow for wood, pink for brick), with its street number. The City of Vancouver publishes it in its open data, lined up with today's streets.

5. Find when it was built, and by whom

The City of Vancouver Archives holds the water service records from the late 1880s on. A house usually applied for water just as it was finished, so the first application dates it and names the applicant, often the owner or builder. Its building permit registers, from 1901, give the date, the applicant, the cost and sometimes the architect. Heritage Vancouver's permit database is a searchable transcription of many of them.

An example: 620 Keefer Street

The City's records give 1905 as the year built, and the house is on the Heritage Register. Here is what the street section of each directory we've read prints at the address, with the page it's on:

• 1905: Clandenning, John A. the page
• 1915: Fraser Alex; Clandening John A the page
• 1925: Clandening J A the page
• 1935: Clendenning M A the page
• 1945: Bezzasso Mrs P the page

Put together, those lines make the house's history.

The shortcut

We've done steps 1 to 4 for every address on ten blocks on three streets: each house page has who the directories list there, decade by decade, with the page behind every line, the 1912 map and what stands there today. Look up an address. If yours isn't covered yet, leave your email on the search page and we'll write once when it is.

The directories are held and scanned by the Vancouver Public Library; the map, property and heritage records are City of Vancouver open data (Open Government Licence – Vancouver); water and permit records are at the City of Vancouver Archives. This guide is ours: we link to these sources and don't copy them.