It’s about as low-key as you can get for a birthday, and 100 years to the day since Crystal Garden opened its doors, the place was empty.
“There should be a great celebration,” says heritage consultant Donald Luxton.
The Francis Rattenbury designed building at 713 Douglas Street stands as a tribute to Victoria’s earliest days, and it’s the kind of place whose architectural accents make you want to peer in a window.
“You’ve got to be inside to see it,” says Luxton. “You don’t look into it from street level so it is a little mysterious.”
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It’s survived the wrecking ball several times, so as the city grows around it, it’s time to reflect.
In 1923, to complement the other buildings in the Inner Harbour designed by Rattenbury, the Canadian Pacific Railway got big concessions from the city to build an amusement centre.
“It had a pool, a dance floor, a theatre, an art gallery,” says Luxton. “It was just a real bustling place when it first opened, and of course it’s the roaring 20s. It was the perfect kind of venue.”
It was named Crystal Garden for its resemblance to London’s Crystal Palace. Its 946,000 litre tank was filled with salt water piped in from the ocean, which was chlorinated and heated for the first year-round facility of its kind in Canada.
The CPR operated the facility for back-to-back 20 year leases, but pulled out in 1963. By then the city was swimming upstream with badly needed repairs and renovations.
“They started looking at the cost of a new pool as opposed to renovating the Crystal Garden,” says Luxton.
The decision was made to build a new pool, bringing part of the name but none of the Edwardian charm to Quadra Street and the Crystal Pool, which opened in 1971.
Crystal Garden was closed and drained, and left a shell of its former grand self until a preservation society was formed, reopening in 1980 as a conservatory, tropical garden and tea room.
The crowds returned and it remained an attraction before closing in 2004, reimagined briefly as the BC Experience. The City took over for good in 2008, renovating the space and reinventing it as an extension of the Victoria Conference Centre.
While the doors are locked 100 years since it opened, there’s still a pool under that floor somewhere. As to whether that concept will swim again, Luxton is doubtful, but won’t rule it out in the future.
“You can do anything if you have enough money,” he says.