Strathcona was always Vancouver’s working class neighbourhood. It was a mish-mash of people from all over the world, coming to Vancouver to work in the nearby Hastings Sawmill and later, the Canadian Pacific Railway terminus. As with any busy and diverse community,  businesses and schools sprung up, making Strathcona a vibrant place to live and shop.

One such enclave within Strathcona was Park Lane. From the early 1900s until the Georgia Viaduct was built in the 1970s, Hogan’s Alley was home to  a very ethnically diverse community, as well as a  concentration of people of African Descent.  The area was a T-shaped intersection at the southwestern edge of Strathcona. The area was officially named Park Lane, but acquired the unofficial moniker after many of Vancouver’s upper-class citizens saw it as a slum. Vancouver’s first archivist, J.S. Matthews, was the first person recorded to have used the term with this community. One thing’s for certain, it was a vibrant area: in a small area, one could find houses, clubs, restaurants – everything from perfectly normal existence to those of the illegal kind. 

What’s the meaning behind Hogan’s Alley, anyway? For starters, its name does not denote something positive. Instead it’s a derogatory term, used t portray areas with immigrants or underprivileged people as red light districts, crime-ridden or ghettoes. The name was derived from Richard Felton Outcault’s comic debuting in 1895, “Hogan’s Alley,” where little Mickey Dugan, who came to be known as the “yellow kid,” took centre stage. The Yellow Kids was bald, toothless and only ever appeared in a nightshirt. The comic depicted Irish slum life in New York City, and much like the Vaudeville performances of its time, used ethnic stereotypes to provide the backdrop for jokes. Outcault’s Hogan’s Alley faded in New York by 1899, but as the idea of depicting slum life continued, Hogan’s Alley made its way to Vancouver in 1914.

Below are examples of the structures that could be found from the 1950s – 1970s in Strathcona, Park Lane and the infamous Hogan’s Alley cartoons.