Hogan's Alley

Hogan’s Alley was a Vancouver, British Columbia, neighbourhood that was home to multiple immigrant communities but was known largely for its African-Canadian population. The name “Hogan’s Alley” was not official, but was the popular term for a T-shaped intersection, including Park Lane, and the nearby residences and businesses at the southwestern edge of Strathcona.The neighbourhood was ruined in the middle of the 20th century with the building of the urban plannig by the city authorities.

File:Hogan's Alley in 1958

Location

Hogan’s Alley was found between Union Street and Prior Street, and no further than Main Street and Jackson Avenue.The viaducts, which are two elevated roadways connecting the Eastern Core area to downtown Vancouver, are the remnants of a 1960s freeway system that was abandoned after significant public opposition, much of it from the Strathcona and Chinatown communities. Through their construction, the viaducts had significant impact on the DTES including the loss of the physical and social heart of Vancouver’s Black community, known as “Hogan’s Alley”.

File:Hogan's Alley

History

The first large wave of black immigration came in the 1850s from San Francisco. They were lured by both the Fraser River Gold Rush and escaping the escalating racism and segregation of Californian society. Although many returned to the United States after the end of the American Civil War, the British Columbian black population began to cluster in Vancouver as the city became the economic center of the province. As many black men were employed as porters on the railways, black families began to gather in the East End, where the western terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway was located. The area they settled became known as Hogan’s Alley.Hogan’s Alley, however, was viewed by some as a problem area for Vancouver. A 1939 article from The Province stated that “to the average citizen, Hogan’s Alley stands for three things: squalor, immorality and crime.”So when the City began embracing the ideology of “urban renewal,” it was surreptitiously decided that Hogan’s Alley, alongside Chinatown and parts of the Downtown East Side, would be cleared for an extensive highway system. And although the highway system never came to fruition due to massive protests from residents, Hogan’s Alley was ultimately destroyed by the building of the Georgia Viaduct. By 1970, most of the black population had already dispersed throughout Vancouver.

People

Although Hogan’s Alley was multi-ethnic, it was home to a cluster of black families, a number of small businesses owned by blacks and the only black church in Vancouver, the African Methodist Episcopal Fountain Chapel. Black communities in Vancouver were a rarity in the early 20th century, but on the edge of Chinatown and surrounded by Strathcona, Hogan’s Alley contained black, Italian and Asian working-class immigrants. During the late 19th century, based on a recent gold rush and a newly founded law in California that would further oppress and ultimately stop black immigrants from entering the state, roughly one thousand blacks moved from San Francisco to British Columbia. Further immigration of blacks to British Columbia continued over the next few decades, contributing to the creation of a neighbourhood known as Hogan’s Alley.

Culture

Nora Hendrix

Its most famous resident is Nora Hendrix, the paternal grandmother of the musician Jimi Hendrix. She was involved in the community from the 1920s through to its demise, remaining nearby until the 1980s. She came to Vancouver in 1911 via Chicago and Seattle and wound up in the East End, where many blacks had settled because they found work as railway porters at the two nearby train stations. Hendrix had a background in vaudeville, and participated in community performances in Vancouver, as did her son, Al Hendrix, Jimi’s father.

File:Nora Hendrix

AME Fountain Chaple

the Fountain Chapel, located at 823 Jackson Avenue from 1918 to 1985. Co-founded by Nora Hendrix, a former vaudeville dancer and grandmother to legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Fountain Chapel was a local chapter of the politically active African Methodist Episcopal Church. Considered the spiritual home of Vancouver’s black community, it was also where the community gathered to organize around issues such as the trial of Fred Deal, a railroad porter charged with murder ing a Vancouver police constable, and the police beating and subsequent death of Clarence Clemons, a black longshoreman. The black community that had geographically coalesced around the Fountain Chapel in the city’s East End was displaced during the city’s slum clearance programs of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1985, not long after Nora Hendrix’s death, the AME sold the building, which housed the Basel Hakka Lutheran Church from then until 2008, when the building was officially decommissioned as a church and became a private residence.On January 30, 2014, Canada Post issued a stamp commemorating Hogan's Alley and the Official First Day Cover depicts an illustration of the Fountain Chapel.

Vie's Chicken and Steak House

Hogan’s Alley was the site of overlapping and shifting ethnic populations, being the original home to Vancouver’s Italian community as well as the southern edge of Chinatown. Black cultural institutions it was known for included “chicken house” restaurants, which often doubled as speakeasies, best known was Vie's Chicken and Steak house. Vie’s Chicken and Steak House was opened in the late 1940's a famous Hogan Alley landmark operated by Vie and Robert Moore for more than 30 years. Vie’s became a favorite destination for visiting black performers including Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. Local legend has it that Nora Hendrix worked at Vie’s and that her grandson, rocker Jimi Hendrix played there.

Jimi Hendrix Shrine

The shrine used to be part of Vie’s, where Jimi's grandmother, Nora Hendrix, worked as a cook for many years and lived nearby. Jimi spent much of his childhood in Vancouver, as his parents often dumped him under the care of relatives. In addition to numerous summer vacations, Jimi even attended school in Vancouver for a brief time. Vie's hosted a number of visiting black performers such as Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. These artists would eat at Vie's after concerts, once the restaurant had closed to the general public. It is believed that Jimi and his cousins would stay up late helping their grandmother serve these famous musicians. After being discharged from the Army, Jimi returned to Vancouver during the winter of 1962- 1963 to practice his music. This shrine features old pictures and memorabilia of Jimi Hendrix and family as well as of the neighborhood.

Urban Planning

Consequently, in 1925, the government of British Columbia introduced the Town Planning Actthat would allow local municipal governments to execute urban plans and re-evaluate and revise zoning bylaws. The first comprehensive plan developed by the City of Vancouver in 1928 was titled the “1928 Bartholomew Plan” which mainly included street and transit redevelopment. with all the racial discrimination focused on the Hogan’s Alley community, it was never considered part of the redevelopment during the design of the comprehensive plan. It wasn’t until after WWII, when the Vancouver Town Planning Commission recalled Bartholomew to redevelop and revise the 1929 plan, that zoning and land efficiency was taken into consideration (along with roadway development and transit network plans) During this time the Canadian Federal government was promoting Uraban Renewal(also known as Slum Clearance), through the 1956 National Housing Act. This act promoted the destruction of blight buildings on valued land to ensure that land was efficiently used. This act only considered the monetary value of the land and virtually ignored their social or cultural significance. While many plans came across the table in the Town Planning Commission office, the one that is of serious concern to the residents of Hogan’s Alley was the relocation and reconstruction of the Georgia Viaduct. The structural integrity of the original Georgia Viaduct was questioned ever since the late 1940’s, and the constant maintenance proved to be a nuisance for the city of Vancouver to manage. The city, therefore, decided to hire consultants to analyze and propose the new location of the viaduct, and future freeway developments. A 1957 study by the City of Vancouver Planning Department described the black population of Strathcona as such: "The Negro population, while numerically small, is probably a large proportion of the total Negro population in Vancouver. Their choice of this area is partly its proximity to the railroads where many of them are employed, partly its cheapness and partly the fact that it is traditionally the home of many non-white groups.

Legacy

Though the area showed almost no signs of its history from the 1970s through the first decade of the 21st century, recent civic acknowledgement has emerged in the form of spaces such as Hogan’s Alley Café and the Jimi Hendrix Shrine, both at the former site of Hogan’s Alley. Community groups such as various Black History Month committees, the Black Cultural Association, and the Hogan’s Alley Memorial Project also succeeded in keeping the memory alive, culminating in the foundation of a city-sponsored plaque at the site in 2013. In 2014, the City of Vancouver officially recognized Hogan’s Alley and its Black community in its proclamation of February as Black History Month. That same year, the 63 cent stamp was released to mark Black History Month across Canada by Canada Post. Two hundred thousand Hogan’s Alley stamps have been printed, along with 200,000 stamps of another now-defunct black neighbourhood, Africville in Halifax. The stamp depicts two former Hogan’s Alley residents, Nora Hendrix and Fielding William Spotts Jr., in front of a painting of Hogan’s Alley.

File:Black History Month stamp