At Home With History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Houses

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Old houses have stories. It doesn't matter whether they are small cottages or multi-million dollar mansions. The stories of the houses weave through New Westminster, Burnaby, the West End, Mount Pleasant and Shaughnessy. Over the years they have housed bootlegging joints or secret rooms, or murderers, or ghosts. More importantly, these houses provide a context for the social history of Vancouver and reveal otherwise forgotten stories or secrets.

I love the idea that a house has a genealogy, much like a person and comes alive through the human interest stories and mysteries that took place inside its walls. Over any period of time there is change, but through it all, the house remains a central fixture and the structure for the inevitable stories that follow.
I also believe that we are the temporary custodians and a chain in the ongoing narrative of the house. And, I'd argue that a social history is every bit as important as an architectural history in preserving buildings for future generations.

The Life and Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman and LeRoy Jensen

Frank Molnar, who I profiled, is one of three extremely talented, but largely unknown artists-mentors, and the only one still living. He resides in Point Grey and paints vibrant, stunning nudes, one of which I’m lucky enough to own.

Frank was 20 when he fled Budapest during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Years of war, Soviet occupation and bombings had turned the city into rubble. He saw starving people and dead bodies in the street; friends would disappear overnight. Frank eventually landed in the United States where he studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1962 he headed for Vancouver. There, his refusal to compromise his work or embrace the various artistic trends of the era, kept him out of the few galleries that existed and away from the public eye.

The second in a series on the Unheralded Artists of BC, the book is filled with gorgeous reproductions of the artist’s paintings and sculpture, personal photographs and previously untold stories.

Frommer’s with Kids Vancouver

When I wrote this guide book back in 2001, part of the appeal was that I could include my children, then aged two, five and eight in the research. We ate out at kid-friendly restaurants, visited dozens of parks and gardens, hiked trails, went to attractions and uncovered places and things to do that we never knew were here. I found that kids can be your key to interacting with the city. You don’t take public transit because you have to, you take a Seabus and SkyTrain for the adventure. You don’t just walk the Stanley Park Seawall, you investigate it. You don’t just take a snap of Hollow Tree, you walk in it and stare up at it, walk around it and explore it. You hunt for giant banana slugs in the woods, watch chipmunks leap about trees, search the sky for soaring eagles and discover a massive ancient tree in the forest.
Vancouver is a place that has no preconceived rules or conventions. It’s about being here, not being seen. And, that’s what makes this city so much fun for families.

BOOK REVIEWS

“You might call her the Sherlock Holmes of home history,” writes the Outlook. “Lazarus’s stories bring Vancouver’s past back to life.”

Georgia Strait: “A mix of old black-and-white street-scene photos, jovial stories, and unique neighbourhood profiles, the book crushes the idea that Vancouver is a city without history.”

Vancouver Sun: “exceptional incidents in ordinary houses and ordinary people in exceptional houses.”

“Lazarus has taken her curiosity and spent countless hours chasing down details on a wide range of Vancouver’s most interesting houses,” says the North Shore News. “The result of her efforts is this entertaining account that tells about the buildings and the people who lived in them.”

“Lazarus reveals the hidden stories of a number of Vancouver’s heritage homes, setting each within the larger context of its neighbourhood,” writes the Vancouver Courier. “Bootleggers rub shoulders with financiers, prostitutes with police, murderers with mayors.”

Coastlines: “At Home with History weaves a colourful tapestry of tales from many of Vancouver’s earliest neighbourhoods, including accounts of bootlegging operations, homes built with ill-gotten gains, and rumours of spies. Through the doors of these houses passed some of the city’s most colourful characters.”

“If the walls could talk, what stories would old Vancouver homes tell? Lazarus went searching and the result is an entertaining and informative book on the city’s social history,” writes B.C. Historical News. “Lazarus’ diligent and extensively detailed book accompanied with archival photographs, serves to remind us rich stories lurking within old homes, whether a mansion or bungalow, are well worth preserving.”

Times Colonist “Frank Molnar (born 1936) is introduced as a Hungarian immigrant with a taste for voluptuous nudes, and writer Eve Lazarus lets us in on the bohemian world of a painter ‘of emotional depth and volatility’.”

“The striking nudes and vibrant still life paintings of Frank Molnar leap off the pages in this study of his work,” says the North Shore News. “The images combined with Eve Lazarus’ account and Charles van Sandwyk’s introduction provides the chance to learn about this talented painter.”

“Frank Molnar is one of three B.C. artists of the 1950s and ‘60s profiled in this richly illustrated book,” writes the Vancouver Sun. “Molnar also painted nudes, including a Leda and the swan series. At the time, Canadians couldn’t handle those paintings, he told Lazarus. ‘They think my art is disturbing for the children. They wouldn’t have it in their living room, wouldn’t have it in their home.”