Established in 1907, South Granville (or less commonly "Uptown") is an upscale
Business Improvement Area (BIA) and neighbourhood south of
Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
's downtown core, centred along
Granville Street
Granville Street is a major street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and part of British Columbia Highway 99, Highway 99. Granville Street is most often associated with the Granville Entertainment District and the Granville Mall, Vancouver ...
and bordered by the neighbourhoods of
Kitsilano,
Fairview and
Shaughnessy.
Separated from Downtown by
False Creek
False Creek (french: Faux ruisseau) is a short narrow inlet in the heart of Vancouver, separating the Downtown and West End neighbourhoods from the rest of the city. It is one of the four main bodies of water bordering Vancouver, along with Eng ...
, the area runs along Granville Street from the south side of the Granville Street Bridge up to 16th Ave, where storefronts are replaced by the residences and hedges of Shaughnessy.
1907 has been decided as the unofficial birth year of the neighbourhood. In that year Richard Marpole drew up plans for Shaughnessy Heights, the Canadian Pacific Railway's newest subdivision south of 16th Ave, pitched as an alternative to the then-upscale West End ("Blueblood Alley"). This is now known as "First Shaughnessy", or simply
Shaughnessy. That same year, what was once Centre Street was given its present name, Granville Street, as the portion north of the bridge already bore that name. In 2007, the South Granville BIA commemorated the neighbourhood's centennial by encasing a state-of-the-art, stainless steel time capsule in concrete and stone under the entrance of the historic
Stanley Theatre.
As well as being a fast-growing neighbourhood of residences, shops and restaurants, South Granville is home to a vibrant arts and culture scene. The neighbourhood contains a strip, between Broadway and the foot of the Granville Bridge, known as "Gallery Row" which is home to a number of
art galleries
An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...
:
Bau-Xi Gallery,
Douglas Reynolds Gallery, Ian Tan Gallery, Petley Jones Gallery, Uno Langmann. The South Granville Gallery Association (SGGA) represents the leading fine art galleries on Gallery Row.
Further south, the neighbourhood is home to the historic
Stanley Theatre, built in 1931. Once a popular cinema in its early days, the Stanley Theatre is now the stage of the
Arts Club Theatre Company
The Arts Club Theatre Company is a Canadian professional theatre company in Vancouver, British Columbia, founded in 1958. It is the largest urban not-for-profit theatre company in the country and the largest in Western Canada, with productions tak ...
and the Industrial Alliance Stage.
References
External links
Information on South Granville from the South Granville Business Improvement Association
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Neighbourhoods in Vancouver