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West Vancouver by Design - by Reto Tschan, Municipal Archivist West Vancouver is well known for the innovative architectural style referred to as The West Coast Style, or West Coast Modernism, developed here in the post-i 945 period. But West Vancouver's architectural history stretches further back, to the Craftsman, Tudor Revival, and Colonial Revival styles popular during the early years of the twentieth century, and to the International Style of the 1930s. One architect, and West Vancouver resident, who was at work during this formative early period was Hugh Astley Hodgson (1880-1965). Hodgson was born in Brisbane, Australia but returned to his family's home on the Isle of Man as a young boy. After apprenticing to a local architect, he attended Liverpool Art School but left in 1907 for San Francisco before completing his degree. A few years later, Hodgson moved north to Vancouver, buying a plot of land in Dundarave. Hodgson quickly established himself as a prominent West Vancouver architect whose local buildings include Pauline Johnson Elementary School (1922), St. Stephen's Church (1925), Inglewood School (1927) and several residential dwellings, including the 1923 Harrison house (2587 Kings Avenue) and his own family's residence, the 1913 Hodgson house (2355 Marine Drive). From his downtown practice, located in the Carter-Cotton building, Hodgson designed prominent buildings throughout the Lower Mainland including office buildings, hotels, and warehouses in downtown Vancouver, the Oakalla Prison in Burnaby, movie theatres around British Columbia, as well as residences in Shaughnessy. Hodgson closed his architectural practice and returned to London in 1936, though the family home in West Vancouver was kept and rented out. During the war, he worked as a supervising architectural inspector with the Heavy Rescue Squad, tasked with assessing the safety of damaged buildings. After the war, he worked for the Ministry of Works remedying war- damaged sites. In 1953, Hodgson and his family returned to West Vancouver where he continued to work on smaller commissions until his death in 1965. While some evidence of Hodgson's work can still be found in the built environment in which we work and live, traces have also been preserved in the West Vancouver Archives. Included among the Hodgson family fonds, acquired by West Vancouver Archives in 2004, are approximately 300 of Hugh Hodgson's architectural plans. These are accompanied by specification sheets, architectural and construction prospectuses, business records, plus a number of photographs relating to his commissions. Thanks in part to funding from the West Vancouver Historical Society, these records have now been arranged, described, and made available through the Archives' online catalogue. Especially interesting are the specification sheets, crammed with design details, which accompany some of the plans, and the commercial pamphlets and brochures which Hodgson collected. Together these records provide a rich picture of early twentieth-century architecture as practiced by one of West Vancouver's very own. left: West Vancouver Archives. Hodgson family fonds. 047.2.02 Oakalla prion architectural plan detail. 1911-1913 right: West Vancouver Archives. Hodgson family fonds. 460.WVA.HOD Residence of Edward H. Moore, (ca. 1912) left: West Vancouver Archives. Hodgson family fonds. 047.3.5. Ink blotter, (192-?). I Ie: H' NTM: Page 7