GRANVILLE PART I
Neon first arrives

JOHN ATKIN
It was a light source that almost nobody had ever seen before.

It was known as liquid light because you could bend the tubes into shapes and things, add a couple of mechanical flickers and suddenly things could move. People were just sort of stunned by the stuff.

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GRANVILLE PART I 

Neon first arrives

NARRATOR
In 1927, Vancouver’s first-ever neon sign was installed on Granville Street, where business was booming. People were eager to put Vancouver on the map as a cutting-edge, modern city. Neon was an exciting new technology, and it signified prosperity and modernity. The neon that started it all in Vancouver still presides over Granville today.

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John Atkin, civic historian

JOHN ATKIN
People really wanted neon on their buildings, um, and so even the owner of the Vancouver Block—the big, white terracotta building with the big square clock on the top — took that clock face and decided to put those reds and blues up on the clock face.

And so here you have, at the time, one of the tallest buildings on the city skyline and it’s now lit with these bright reds and blues. And so that said to everybody, “We have a new, modern, forward-looking city.”

NARRATOR
Once the first neon arrived on the Vancouver Block, business owners across the city were crazy about neon, and so was the general public. Neon signs were popping up in huge numbers across the city. Downtown, Granville Street was a kaleidoscope of exciting new neon signs.

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Dal Richards, saxophonist, big-band leader

DAL RICHARDS
When I was coming downtown to play at the Hotel Vancouver regularly, that was the beginning of the buildup of neon on Granville. I found it very interesting, the imagination that these designers had. Every neon sign was different.

The theatres obviously were the key points: the Orpheum, the Capitol, and the Vogue. They set the tone, those theatre signs. and the signs have show business written all over them.

NARRATOR
Granville Street’s “Theatre Row” cemented the strip as the heart of downtown by the 1940s.

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Norman Young, retired theatre professor and actor

NORMAN YOUNG
Absolutely. Granville, if you’re going downtown, you weren’t going anywhere else. If you came downtown, you were going to Granville Street. I mean, you’d come down, you’d walk along, and you’d see people you knew. You’d see them. They were here on Granville Street. Out of their homes, they’re going into the cafes with the beautiful neon signs. They’re going into the theatres.

NARRATOR
By 1953, Vancouver glowed with an estimated 19,000 neon signs across the city. That was at least one sign for every 18 residents in the city at the time.

JOHN ATKIN
In many ways the White Lunch signs are the spectaculars. These threw so much light on the street, and they were so big. They had movement, they had the colour, and it really summed up sort of the art of the sign designer, “How do we get people to pay attention to the business that we’re advertising?”

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Bill Pechet, architect and designer

BILL PECHET
The signs are very powerful icons that represent the businesses that they serve. But also, they become part of the street, and they really bespeak of a kind of energy and a love of the senses. When you see them, they project this beautiful colour out into the street.

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Kevin Dale McKeown, arts writer and advocate

KEVIN DALE MCKEOWN
By the late sixties when I was coming downtown as a teenager, and I was coming downtown at night and ignoring curfew and all of that, there was a glamour to it. It was lights and action. The neon, and the street lighting and the bumper-to-bumper traffic at night, and the different subcultures, if you will, that were hanging out.

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Judy Graves, advocate for the homeless, City of Vancouver

JUDY GRAVES
We loved it. It made, even though you had no money, just being able to walk the wet streets and sidewalks and see the lights splashing all over made you feel rich and excited and as if you were really doing something.

BILL PECHET
Human beings have these sensorial receptors. And things like neon signs feed directly into them. We respond viscerally to the kind of warmth and energy that the tubes of light produce. And I think that they’re very important elements in a city. They speak of a kind of interest in the night. And a kind of revel in excess in a kind of way that’s very beautiful.

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