History

Gastown was Vancouver's first downtown core and is named after "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a Geordie seaman, steamboat captain and barkeep who arrived in 1867 to open the area's first saloon. The town soon prospered as the site of a sawmill, seaport, and quickly became a general centre of trade and commerce on Burrard Inlet as well as a rough-and-rowdy resort for off-work loggers and fishermen as well as the crews and captains of the many sailing ships which came to Gastown or Moodyville, on the north side of the inlet (which was a dry town) to load logs and timber.

In 1886, the town was incorporated as the City of Vancouver. It fell victim to the "Great Vancouver Fire" that same year, losing all but two of its buildings. The area was completely rebuilt and continued to thrive, finding new life as the centre of the city's wholesale produce distribution until the Great Depression in the 1930s and until the instigation of Prohibition, the centre of the city's drinking life (there were 300 licensed establishments the twelve-block area of the former Granville, B.I.) After the Depression Gastown was a largely-forgotten neighbourhood of the larger city and fell into decline and disrepair until the 1960s.

In the 1960s, citizens became concerned with preserving Gastown's distinctive and historic architecture, which like the nearby Chinatown and Strathcona were scheduled to be demolished to build a major freeway into the city's downtown. A campaign led by businessmen and property owners as well as the counterculture and associated political protestors, some of them American draft dodgers, pressured the provincial government to declare the area a historical site in 1971, protecting its heritage buildings to this day.

Also in 1971, the Gastown Riots began when a marijuana 'smoke in' became violent when the Vancouver police intervened.

Today

Gastown is a mix of "hip" contemporary fashion and interior furnishing boutiques, tourist-oriented businesses (generally restricted to Water Street), restaurants, nightclubs, poverty and newly-upscale housing. In addition, there are law firms, architects and other professional offices, as well as computer and internet businesses, art galleries, music and art studios, and acting and film schools.

Popular annual events that take place on the faux-cobblestone streets of Gastown include the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Tour de Gastown international bicycle race.

The Gastown Steam Clock

Gastown's most famous (though nowhere near oldest) landmark is its steam-powered clock, located on the corner of Cambie and Water Street. Built to cover a steam grate, part of Vancouver's distributed steam-heating system, the clock was built as a way to harness the steam and to prevent street people from sleeping on the spot in cold weather. Its original design was faulty and it had to be powered by electricity after a breakdown. The steam mechanism was completely restored with the financial support of local businesses as it had become a major tourist attraction, and is promoted as a heritage feature although it is of modern invention. The steam used is low pressure downtown-wide steam heating network (from a plant adjacent to the Georgia Viaduct) that powers a miniature steam engine in its base, in turn driving a chain lift. The chain lift moves steel balls upward, where they are unloaded and roll to a descending chain. The weight of the balls on the descending chain drives a conventional pendulum clock escapement, geared to the hands on the four faces. The steam also powers the clock's sound production as whistles are used instead of bells to produce the Westminster "chime" and to signal the time.