An artistic impression of an imagined 510 Burrard Street in Vancouver from the early 1980s by Wayne Lunan, a building that ultimately become the (new) Montreal Trust Company Building, also known as the Manulife Tower. When Montreal Trust was sold to Scotiabank in 1994, it also became a Scotiabank tower, though Vancouver already has a Scotia Tower (650 W Georgia St) as well as an old Montreal Trust Building (now known as 966 Howe Street).
The architectural illustrator, Wayne Lunan, was one of the top local names in architectural rendering of the pre-cgi era, along with Ron Love, Bob McIlhargey (deceased 1998), Lori Brown, and Barry Lundahl. I had hoped to meet both Wayne and Barry in preparation for my show at the MoV Vancouver Imagined, the Way We Weren’t, but I never managed to do so. Until now, I’ve never had a good opportunity to feature Wayne Lunan’s work, but I recently found this original artwork for sale, and the price was right, so I bought it!
The illustrated building is simple but striking, showing two converged rectangular forms clad in mirrored glass and merged together at a dramatic perpendicular angle. The angle is perfectly aligned to reflect the Marine Building in the distance, as well as the Abbotsford Hotel (still there today, known as the Days Inn Vancouver Downtown). Wayne worked out of the Marine Building at the time of this drawing. Also prominently visible is a Bentall Tower from across Burrard Street. Without seeing any other preliminary plans, this rendering may have been a vanity project / portfolio piece, and not specifically for this particular development or architect. The work does speak to the medium of illustration rather well, reflecting old and new towers in the same structure.
Take a close look at the drawing, and it would seem that every other car in his illustration is a long and low Lincoln Continental Mark VI. Coming down Pender Street, we can spot a single BC Hydro transit bus, barely making out the distinctive circular logo adorning the front of the vehicle along with the blue/green stripes down the side of the bus. Thus, we can date this drawing some time before March of 1982, the month BC Transit was formed, and the month the ceremonial groundbreaking for Skytrain took place.
The contrasts between the imagined and the reality are rather stark; the current building is almost invisible in it’s reserved colour scheme—dare I call it banality? I wonder if this appearance, rather reminiscent of a red brick building, was due to a certain city planner, who had a preference for the look of bricks over glass on many of the building he approved. To the building’s credit, it has apparently won awards for being green. I suppose it’s just as conceivable that the mirrored glass building depicted in the illustration would also look rather simplistic and ordinary today, amid all the twisted buildings being constructed around it. So rather than pit these two buildings against each other, I’d rather see them both as a reflection of the times, an age before Skytrain and Expo86, when tall glass towers downtown were still something of a novelty.
