PASSION FOR CHINATOWN
Jack Chow never stopped promoting his community
Jack Chow was a passionate guy. And one of the things that could really get him going was the City of Vancouver charging him taxes for the bay windows of his building at Pender and Carrall streets.
“He battled with the city over the bay windows extending over the sidewalk, taking up the air space,” said his son Rod. “They wanted to charge us ($260 per year) taxes for the air space. Eventually they reduced it to $1 a year. And then the postage was too much, so they eventually waived it entirely.
“So it paid off to stand up for his rights. Some people might have given up, but he never gave up on anything.”
The longtime Chinatown fixture died of natural causes at Vancouver General Hospital on Feb. 9 at age 90.
“He was pretty active to the end, always on the computer, giving us suggestions and ideas,” said Rod Chow. “And still talking to the city, because he was very concerned about Chinatown. He wanted to do whatever he can, right up to the end, to bring Chinatown back to how he remembered it.”
Jack Wing Chow was born in Cumberland on Aug. 7, 1930, where his family ran the Chow Lee General Store. He moved to Vancouver with his mother in his teens after his father died. Initially he sold real estate, but in 1962 he added a second business, Jack Chow Insurance, at Pender and Main streets.
The insurance business thrived, but in the 1980s the Bank of Commerce evicted him from his longtime space.
“He built a mezzanine, but then the bank took over and he was forced to move,” said Rod Chow. “(But) they stayed in Chinatown. They moved to another location on Keefer Street and Main Street. Eventually he saw this property that was dilapidated at Pender and Carrall, the Sam Kee building. So he purchased it as an Expo project and renovated it.”
The price was $150,000, and renovations cost $250,000. But the building brought Jack Chow international renown, because it's the thinnest commercial building in the world. It was constructed in 1913 by pioneer Chinatown businessman Chang Toy, who was known as Sam Kee.
The city had expropriated most of a lot Chang owned to widen Pender Street, leaving a strip of land six feet wide and 96 feet long. Chang was ticked off at the city lowballing him by not expropriating the whole lot. So he had an architect and engineers build a six-foot-wide structure, with bay windows on a second floor that hang over the street.
“Inside it's four feet 10 inches wide,” explains Rod Chow. “The bay windows extend out a couple more feet (on the second floor). The length of the building is about 100 feet, it's like a whole city block. If you look at it from at the front, it's super-wide, if you look at it from the end, it's super-skinny.
“It has the only sign in the world that's wider than the building itself. The neon sign that projects off the building is wider than the building.”
Chow was a very good promoter, and went to London, England, to try to get the Sam Kee building recognized by the Guinness World Records. It's now recognized as “the shallowest commercial building in the world.”
Chow is survived by his wife, Jean, and four children, Rod, Reg, Barbara and Debra, who all work at Jack Chow Insurance.