Exhibit Gallery: Urban Renewal, the Georgia Viaduct and the Destruction of a Community
In 1958, when Dr. Leonard Marsh proposed his urban renewal policy and a redevelopment plan for Strathcona, the neighbourhood’s days were numbered. Strathcona became targeted for slum clearance,” and slowly, it was erased. It was due to this ongoing clearance mission that places like “Hogan’s Alley,” (an area within Strathcona with an ethnically diverse, working-class population) were destroyed. Below are some of the City of Vancouver’s maps showing the targeted plans for the area.
The 1960s freeway fever did not escape Vancouver and sped up the process. After all, how great would it be to have a direct conduit from the downtown waterfront to the spacey suburbs and avoid, or better yet, remove the more undesirable areas of the city? The first phase was achieved with the replacement of the old Georgia Viaduct, but the freeway would never come to be thanks to many protests. Nonetheless, this “progress” didn’t come without its casualties. Hogan’s Alley was completely destroyed and the people living there effectively displaced. Below are photos showing demolition, construction and structures that were removed during the process.
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 to portray areas with immigrants or underprivileged people as red light districts, crime-ridden or ghettoes. The name was derived from Richard Felton Outcault 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. It is due to this notion of Hogan’s Alley being a slum that the City of Vancouver targeted it for clearance and erased it from Vancouver’s map.
