The Victorian age

For the past few days I’ve been vacationing in Victoria, BC. It’s not my first trip here, but it might as well be. The last time I was a toddler.

(In case you’re wondering, no—this doesn’t have much to do with Portland Architecture. But I trust you gentle readers will cut me some slack. We’ll be back with regular local design programming by late this week. Or early next week at the latest. I mean, hey, the French take a whole month off. Can't I have a couple days?)

The city is considerably smaller than I expected. I knew Victoria was not a big metropolis like Vancouver (Canada), but it feels almost like a small Oregon coast town—particularly Astoria, with its fabric of historic homes. From our hotel looking out at the inner harbor (or, if you prefer, ‘harbour’) there is a constant stream of sea planes landing on the water and the squawk of seagulls, but otherwise it seems like a sleepy town. Victoria, like lots of Canada, also feels a bit more European, especially British of course, than US cities. There are old stone churches and probably more Welsh rarebit or shepherd’s pie than we have in Portland. But like our city, the visual icon is not any built structure so much as the surrounding mountains. In Victoria despite the proximity to the sea, the sunset view is blocked by the Olympic mountains of Washington, but in return they seem to insulate the town both figuratively and literally.

Easily the most well known building is the Empress Hotel, a grand stone edifice covered in ivy, overlooking the harbor from a front row vantage on Government Street. Although Portland has a few venerable old hotels such as the Benson, we don’t have an iconic grand hotel like the Empress – wouldn’t you say?

Naturally the signature attraction of Victoria, though, is Butchart Gardens. We went there today and it was indeed spectacular. But riding the half-hour so on the bus from downtown to Buchart, the otherwise unique central city gave way surprisingly quickly to the same generic stretch of strip malls and chain stores as everywhere else. This after seeing not a single McDonald's downtown. Starbucks seemed the only corporation to crack the code until we got further into Victoria's outer environs.

Yesterday I was walking in the Oak Bay neighborhood and happened to notice a historic marker designating the spot of an old trolley-car line. Although more European, Victoria also was not immune to the age of automobiles.

Because I have a back injury and can’t walk around as much as I’d normally like to, we (the girlfriend and I) took a ride on one of those touristy open-topped double-decker buses. I had to laugh at the tour guide’s unintended architectural prejudices. If we came past an old “heritage building”, the guide would proudly explain how it had been preserved and couldn’t be torn down. Which is great, of course. But then inevitably he’d say something like, “Now if you see that building on your left that looks a little like a prison, that’s one of our new modern waterfront houses,” or “that’s one of our new condos.” It’s true that bad modern architecture can be pretty oppressive, especially if there isn’t a lot of glass and transparency to the design. But some of the high density they’re adding to Victoria, like most other North American cities, seems both aesthetically appealing and good for the town. Who wants sprawl in such beautiful country, looking out at the San Juan Islands, and the ocean?

To get here, we eschewed the easier/faster plane right or driving combination for an Amtrak trip to Seattle and then a ferry to Victoria. Boarding at Union Station early last Sunday morning, the train was surprisingly packed. The conductor told us ridership on the Cascades line between Portland and Seattle has been way up since the cost of gas skyrocketed. I don’t like paying over $4 a gallon any more than the next person, but it was another reminder of how the resulting changes in Americans’ habits because of oil and gas inflation are a strong bright side. If people keep riding Amtrak a lot more than they used to, might this be the impetus that’s needed to upgrade this pathetic excuse for a national passenger rail system? Or maybe, dare I say, a high-speed rail system? After all, our combination train and ferry trip through Seattle to Vancouver took us about nine hours (three for each leg, with another three hours in between). If the numbers stayed high, it’d be easier to have more trains running more frequently on the tracks between Seattle and Portland each day, or even more ferries to Victoria. It seems like we’re ready to upgrade mass transit in the coming generation, but the infrastructure is still far from meeting those needs.

Meanwhile, it will always be nice to get back to the Rose City. Call me biased or even sentimental perhaps, but whether it’s Seattle or any other North American city, I don’t think any compare to ours.

Comments

[Ben Waterhouse]

My wife and I honeymooned in Victoria. It's a beautiful city with an extraordinary heritage, but I agree with you--Portland is tops.

[kathleen]

Victoria on a sunny dry day is gorgeous. My husband and I go there quite often. I heartily recommend getting out of the touristy core and walking through the extended city's many parks (what views!), or biking on the Galloping Goose trail that takes you way past city limits, visiting the many harbors along the lower island's inlets and bays and for architecture fans trolling for sights of the new influx of contemporary homes. Yes, Victoria is changing and waking up a bit. There are now 1500 software companies in town and for the first time the city marked as many young as old inhabitants.It'll never be Portland but its golden age is still ahead.

[Pam]

Another garden that is nice is the Government House gardens.

[audrey alverson]

Amen...or, uh, something like that...to the idea of better mass transit!!! I, too, hope that fuel prices will fuel (pun intended) more use of transit, which will fuel more transit options. One can hope anyway...

[John]

If there's one thing that's true of Victoria, it's that American's love to come here and tell us how small, cute, and charming it is. We understand that they don't mean anything negative by that, but it always comes off as being condescending.

Victoria might have felt like a small oregon coast town like Astoria, but it actually has about 30 times the population of Astoria. The University of Victoria alone has thousands more students than Astoria has people.

Also, the tallest building in Astoria is maybe 7 floors, while Victoria has 37 buildings that are over 10 floors (a few of which are over 20 floors), and has recently approved another 6 (including one at 24 floors). There's over $3 billion in developments happening around Victoria at the moment, but that kind of high-rise condo and office tower development is typical of sleepy towns, right?

Also, like most small sleepy towns, Victoria happens to be the capital city of the province of British Columbia, where the Premier, the lieutenant-governor, and the 79 elected members of the Legislative Assembly do the typical small town work of creating laws and managing a $40 billion budget for a province of 4.4 million people.

In fact, Victoria is such a sleepy town that it has an international airport with direct flights to San Francisco, Toronto, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas.

Yup, Victoria is just a small town where not much happens besides walks in the park and tea at the Empress.

[Brian Libby]

John,

Thanks for setting us straight, and me especially. I underestimated all that Victoria has going.

Glad you're not insecure about it, either.

:)

[Nikos]

Now, that's an unlikely flight, Victoria BC to Salt Lake City...the trivia one learns every day scouring the internet!

[John]

I think the purpose of the flights to/from Salt Lake City is because it's a hub for Delta Airlines. So if you fly through SLC, you can easily connect to lots of other cities.

[Nikos]

I know, you can fly from SLC to Paris on Delta. Now, that's a culture shock...

Besides, if you get tired of all the frenzy of activity in Victoria (there's only so musch tea, flowers and Canadian legislativve activity one can take) Vancouver and Seattle are only a ferry ride away!

[John]

Brian, I posted a comment with a bunch of links to renderings of developments happening in Victoria, but the blog spam filter says it needs to be moderated.

:(

[benjamin]

John,

You can't for a minute say that our perception of Victoria as an enclave of cuteness hasn't been perpetuated by your local government. While it would be moronic to think there aren't other things happening in Victoria besides high tea at the Empress, it's that type of association that's heavily marketed to American visitors (and visitors from other parts of Canada).

Either way, we love coming to your city, your island, and to Vancouver across the water. And when I do visit Victoria, I (like kathleen) enjoy its more dynamic aspects, which can be found outside of the tourist core. You dig?

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