Photographs by the author. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. Click on all the images to enlarge them.]
The Crystal Garden was designed and built in 1924-1925 by architects Francis Mawson Rattenbury and Percy Leonard James for the Canadian Pacific Railway, which intended it as both a convention and entertainment centre for the Empress Hotel, which stands on the opposite side of Douglas Street at the corner of Belleville. 701-11 Douglas Street, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: "Say 'Crystal Garden' to anyone today, and they will probably wax eloquent about the tropical paradise that once existed beneath its glass-paned roof. But 80 years ago, it was designed as a multi-purpose pleasure palace. And it contained the largest indoor heated salt-water swimming pool in the British Empire (Humphreys, June 2006).
A panoramic day-time shot from the Times-Colonist website, and detail of ornate façade on the portico.
The Crystal Garden pool was closed owing to a medical emergency involving a chlorine leak in 1967, and rapidly went into a commercial decline before being reconstituted as a conservatory and an extension of the Victoria Convention Centre in 1980. However, for five decades it was a vital community resource as both a swimming pool and social centre, hosting generations of high school after-grads and wedding receptions. At the time that it was under construction, the Crystal Garden (with a nod to Sir Joseph Paxton's gigantic greenhouses at Kew Gardens, and the Crystal Palace built in Hyde Park, London, for the Great Exhibition in 1851) was unique in Canada in terms of its materials and state-of-the-art heating system. Rattenbury used 30-inch-thick concrete for the foundation, a steel platform, and an iron-and-glass superstructure for the glass roof above the swimming pool, which held some 250,000 gallons of seawater piped in from Dallas Road, and was heated by the Empress Hotel's laundry. In the 1930s the pool was converted to chlorinated water to fight bacterial growth. As mentioned above, the Crystal Garden re-opened as a botanical garden and conservation centre in 1980; that operation ended in 2004, but the Crystal Garden re-opened again in 2008 as an extension of the Conference Centre across the street.
Its prominent corner position provides continuity to the streetscape of tourism-related buildings that extend outwards from the Inner Harbour to Saint Anne's Academy and the old Victoria General Hospital in the blocks behind it. For decades, this was the first major Victoria building that tourists saw as they stepped off the bus from the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal as it pulled into the Greyhound Bus Terminal immediately opposite.
A panoramic night-time shot from the Victoria Conference Centre, Tourism Victoria, website, and detail of ornate façade on the portico.
The architectural value of Crystal Garden results from its innovative design. It is unique among the city's buildings by virtue of its distinctive glass roof and horizontal massing. In this sense, the Crystal Garden is a "reflection of the nineteenth century industrial world of steel — reminiscent of railway architecture — and the genteel traditions of glass-enclosed spaces" (Canada's Historic Places).
Character-Defining Elements include its:
- horizontal form and rectangular massing;
- prominent corner position and Douglas Street commercial storefronts;
- reinforced steel construction and pitched glass roof;
- brick bearing walls and concrete raft foundation;
- classical exterior detailing. [Source: Canada's Historic Places]
Bibliography
Barrett, Anthony A., and Rhodri Windsor Liscombe. Francis Mawson Rattenbury and British Columbia: Architecture and Challenge in the Imperial Age. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1983.
Bell, Jeff. "Victoria's Crystal Garden draws interest from three groups." 23 October 2014. Web. Accessed 28 April 2023.
Canada’s Historic Places. "The Crystal Garden." Web. Accessed 25 April 2023
Elliot, David R. "Rattenbury, Francis Mawson." Canadian Encyclopedia. Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988. Vol. 3: 1828-1829.
Liscombe, Rhodri Windsor. "Rattenbury, Francis Mawson." The Canadian Encyclopedia. Posted 20 May 2008. Web. 25 April 2023.
Victoria Business Events. "Historic Crystal Garden." Web. 28 April 2023.
Created 28 April 2017