REAL ESTATE ACE ROSE TO THE TOP
British immigrant made his name in Vancouver
Old photos often fade into oblivion. But thanks to the magic of Photoshop, sometimes you can bring them back.
This happened when I came across an ancient sepia-tone pic in The Sun’s “Vancouver BC: Historical” photo file.
Most of the prints in the file are recent reproductions, but there were a few century-old gems hidden away, including a photo of five well-dressed men posing in front of H.A. Jones & Co. Real Estate and Insurance.
The image is so faint you can barely see them, but when I darkened it they came back to life, in all their 1888-90 glory.
You can date it because the building says 312, and H.A. Jones was located at 312 Cordova at the time. Before that, Jones was on Carrall Street; afterwards, he moved to 405-407 West Cordova.
Somebody has written the men’s names on the back: M.H. Hirshberg, H.A. Jones, J.A. Russell and Wm. Cowderoy. The young man in the middle of the photo is labelled “boy,” and Russell was identified as a “prominent attorney.”
In fact, they all seem to have been quite prominent in Vancouver’s early years.
The 1889 Henderson’s Directory lists Martin Hirshberg as the business manager for one of Vancouver’s first newspapers, the News-Advertiser. William Cowderoy was a bookkeeper who lived at 410 Alexander St., a block up the street from Hastings Mill manager Richard Alexander and businessman Henry Bell-Irving.
They both had offices at 312 Cordova in 1890, which may mean they were working with H.A. Jones, who was one of the big movers and shakers of early Vancouver. When he died on Feb. 3, 1923, both the Province and Vancouver World ran his obituary on the front page.
Henry Albert Jones was born in Liverpool, England in 1851 or 1852 and immigrated to the United States when he was 20, settling in Ohio. In March 1886, he moved to Vancouver, a month before the city was incorporated.
He quickly became one of Vancouver’s top real estate salesmen. Jones is one of the nine men in H.T. Devine’s famous 1886 photo of a real estate office in a giant tree stump. He’s standing on the stump, just to the left of a sign that reads “Vancouver Lots for Sale.” (The Sun has an original 1880s print of that photo, as well.)
When I was searching for a subject for this week’s column, I went fishing in the Jan. 28, 1889 Vancouver World. And lo and behold if there wasn’t an H.A. Jones & Co. ad for properties whose value “will double inside of a year.”
They probably did. Jones was selling a half-acre lot on 7th Avenue for $1,000, and wanted $2,000 for 35 acres “near (Mountain View) cemetery.” If you wanted to go “three miles out” from the city, Jones had 50 acres for sale for $750. He was also selling two eight-acre blocks “in city limits” for $1,000 apiece. In 1891, Jones became an investor in the North Vancouver Land and Improvement Company, a pioneer developer on the North Shore. Real estate and politics were closely allied at the time — the Oct. 30, 1891 Vancouver World reported that North Vancouver council met in Jones’ office.
His name crops up all the time in the Vancouver World, which you can search online at Newspapers. com. In 1897, he spent 10 weeks in the Kootenays setting up lots for sale in the new town of Salmo, near Nelson.
“The higher altitudes appear to agree with Mr. Jones, as he is in the pink of health and looking exceedingly well,” the World reported.
In 1909, he spent $100,000 purchasing 2,700 feet of waterfront by today’s New Brighton Park “on behalf of English capitalists.” In 1910, he was selling the townsite of Soda Creek on the Fraser River, “the garden spot of the Cariboo.” In 1911, he was selling land at Port Mann, the proposed terminus of the Canadian Northern railway.
He was also selling real estate in Seattle, where he lived part of the time. In 1913, his wife Clara filed for divorce in the Emerald City. He offered to give her $165,000 worth of property, but a judge in Seattle thought he was undervaluing his holdings, and said he had to give her $300,000.
The World doesn’t say what he eventually settled for, but when he died, he left an estate of $227,000.