With the help of the Gastown Business Improvement Society and the Vancouver archives you can now learn about each building in Gastown through the Gastown Blog Building History Series. Enjoy and keep posted for more history from the Gastown Blog.

In this week’s addition, we are profiling Malkin Building, home to the Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant and Michelle’s Import Plus.  The upper floors have been converted to residential live/work studios.

Check out our previous Building History posts on the Hotel Europe, the Landing, Leckie Building, Hotel Dominion, Holland Block, Packing House, Canadian Fairbanks Building, The Boulder, Springer-Van Bramer, Ferguson Block,  Winters Hotel, and Buscombe Building

Malkin Building -  53 Water Street
Built: 1907-1912
Architect: John Edmeston Parr & Thomas A. Fee
Architecture Style: Edwardian Commercial

VPL 11552 – 1929. The “Malkin’s Best’ sign was the company’s trademark.

William Harold Malkin left the prairies in 1895 to join his brother Fred here in Vancouver. With a background in merchandising, he soon got a job working for Osmund Skrine Wholesale produce merchants. In 1897 Harold and his brother bought the company and changed the name to W.H. Malkin & Co. Wholesale Grocers, Tea Blenders and Coffee Roasters.  The company went on to add preserves, pickles and import spices to their product line and quickly become one of Vancouver’s most important import businesses. Malkin products could be found in every household as well as in the packs of prospectors heading for the Klondike.

VPL 11553 - 1929. Malkin Co.’s coffee packing line. The top floor of the building was devoted to tea and coffee. It had the most modern coffee roasting and tea blending equipment in B.C.

In 1907, the Malkin brothers started construction on this massive brick and timber warehouse to meet the growing demand of their business which prospered from the mining boom in the Kootenays and the Klondike Gold Rush. The Western half of the building was constructed in 1907, the Eastern half in 1912.  The simple façade and heavy cornice are typical of Parr and Fee’s solidly-built, no-nonsense commercial buildings.

CVA: 371-1884 W.H. Malkin – 1920’s. Mr. Harold Malkin served as Mayor of Vancouver from 1929 to 1930

Malkin. Then and Now.