Originally named the Colonial, the name was changed to “Yale Hotel” in 1907. The neighbourhood was on the edge of the False Creek waterfront industrial area, the CPR yards with their locomotive sheds and roundhouse were nearby, and most of the clientele were rowdy railway men. The Yale was then at the centre of the notorious Yaletown nightlife, which attracted pimps, whores, and opium addicts. (The term “junkie” is derived from the Chinese Junks that were reputedly bringing opiates to the North American ports on the Pacific.)
Yaletown was named after the town of Yale by the Fraser canyon, once the largest city in Western Canada. Yale was founded as a HBC trading post, but soon became a gold rush boomtown and afterwards a railway boomtown. What remained constant was the violence, whores, saloons, alcohol and opium – one of its more polite appellations was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Northwest. When the railway was completed, many of Yale’s houses were dismantled and brought to Vancouver, along with the Chinese, white, and Indian workers. Yale had been renown for its hard-drinking rowdy workers, and its tough-fighting whores. Both retained their recreational culture with its predilection for alcohol and opiates when they relocated to Yaletown, then outside of Vancouver proper.
The hotel has a distinctive appearance – the mansard roof and the second-floor round-headed windows mark this blocky building as Quebec-style Second Empire. The term mansard roof derives from the architect François Mansart (1598-1666), who gave his name to, though he did not invent, the distinctive roofs that have a flat upper part and steeply pitched sides. The Second Empire that the style references is the Second French Empire, the Bonapartist regime of Napoleon the third (1852 to 1879).
The Second Empire style was chosen for the new additions to the Louvre, and spread from Paris to the Canada in the 1870s when the style was faddishly popular. The Quebec provincial legislature building and Montreal City Hall are perhaps Canada’s best known example of the style at its purest. Hollywood has created associations between the Second Empire mansard roof style and “haunted houses”, as it was the style of the Bates Motel in Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and subsequently became the choice of horror film art directors.
Stylistically the Yale descends from the grand mansard-roofed hotels of Montréal, like the Windsor. The Yale, a downmarket descendant, is in the style of the workman’s hotels that could be found near the railway yards in cities across the country. Across Canada, the mansard roof became associated with hotel accommodation, and the alcoholic joys of the pubs which they usually contained.
After an incarnation as a biker-frequented stripper bar in the 1970s, the Yale re-invented itself as a blues bar. It was the residence of Robbie King, keyboard player of great repute, as well as Long John Baldry, one of the founders of English rock and roll. Long John Baldry discovered and nurtured many musicians who would later become pop stars, such as Rod Stewart, whom he found busking on the street, and invited him to his band. One of the first openly gay pop stars, Baldry brought many a musician out of the closet and up to his room.
The current denizens of Yaletown are yuppies rather than the waterfront working class of the 1880 to 1940s, but fortunately the Yale’s clientele are blues lovers of all classes and races. As of this writing, the Yale is closed for a 12-month heritage renovation; we shall see how much of this historic building remains.
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