Rare, crisp collection of images depicts pioneering life in B.C.
Photos include waterfront panorama taken just before scorching Great Fire
Like many pioneer Vancouverites, James Dixon Townley collected photos of his new hometown.
He had an exceptional eye. His collection includes original prints of many classic pioneer images: the “real estate office in a big tree” photo in May 1886, the eerie shot of the scorched city after the Great Fire of June 13, 1886, and the staged photo of Vancouver's first council meeting outside a tent in September of 1886.
In the 1890s he had Neelands Brothers photographers in Nelson put many of his prints into a handsome leather-bound book he called Views of British Columbia. The binding was done by Gustav Rhoedde, whose West End home is now Rhoedde House Museum.
Townley's collection has been passed down the family through inheritance. But it has now come to the market through the Wayfarer's Bookshop, an online antiquarian bookseller based on Bowen Island.
The Townley Collection of Early Vancouver, British Columbia and Canadian Pacific Railway Photographs features 136 prints, in two albums and individual prints.
It includes photographs from all the top Vancouver photographers in the 1880s and '90s, including Devine and Brock, the Bailey Brothers, the Neelands Brothers, and Trueman and Caple. But it also includes some gems from lesser-known photographers such as Alexander Thom, Thompson and Bovill, and W. Chapman.
Townley's Views of British Columbia is the key item. The album features 42 photos, which are in mint shape because the photos haven't been exposed to light.
“The album is unusually sharp and crisp, and the photos are dark,” said Eric Waschke, who runs Wayfarer's Bookshop with wife Alisa.
“For early Vancouver photos I think it's as good as it gets. There's some interesting B.C. ones as well, because the guy was involved with the CPR.”
The Views of British Columbia album includes three H.T. Devine photos of the Gastown waterfront. When you place them together they become a panorama of the waterfront, taken just before the city was scorched in the Great Fire.
“To have that panorama of Vancouver before the fire is the ultimate, really,” said Waschke.
There is also a 32-image album of H.T. Devine prints and some wonderful individual shots, such as a Bailey Brothers photo of the Van Winkle Hydraulic Mine in Lytton where four miners are shown blasting a hillside with a water cannon.
There is also a pair of original Bailey Brothers prints of the ornate interior of the Vancouver Opera House on Granville Street in the 1890s. But they've already sold, at $450 apiece.
Demand has also been high for several stereoviews — prints with two similar images that look 3-D when viewed through a “stereoscope” viewer.
“It turns out the Bailey Brothers stereoviews are incredibly rare, none of the big collectors had any of them,” said Waschke. “I talked to (antique dealer and collector) Uno Langmann about it and even Uno had never seen any of the Bailey Brothers stereoviews.”
Individual prints are for sale for $250 and up. The Views of British Columbia album is $25,000, while the Devine album is $12,500. The provenance of the collection is impeccable.
James Dixon Townley came to Vancouver in 1886 or 1887. As the assistant to the general superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, he was prominent in both business and political circles — his brother Thomas was Vancouver's mayor in 1901.
Thomas Townley's son Fred was an architect, and designed Vancouver's art deco city hall with partner Robert Matheson.
J.D. Townley lived in a big mansion at the southeast corner of Burrard and Hastings, the eastern end of Vancouver's first elite neighbourhood, Blueblood Alley. There's a photo of his mansion in the Vancouver Archives. He died while visiting Portland, Ore., on Sept. 28, 1906.
The collection was inherited by his brother Charles, whose wife Alice was a well-known local writer and suffragette, as well as the first woman in Vancouver elected to the park board. After Charles and Alice died, the collection went to her sister Ethel Herchmer, whose descendants decided to sell it.
J.D. Townley probably collected the photos at the time they were taken. H.T. Devine was in the photo business in Vancouver from only 1886 to 1889, when he went into real estate. (Many early B.C. photographers switched careers, because photography didn't seem to have paid that well.)
Charles Bailey of the Bailey Brothers died of tuberculosis in 1896 at 27. He was partners with H.G. Neelands in 1889 and 1890, when Neelands moved to Nelson with his brothers James and Sam.
Neelands Brothers Photographers' last appearance is in the 1897 Henderson's B.C. Gazetteer and Directory, so the Views of British Columbia album of Devine, Bailey and Neelands photos was done before that.