110 Esplanade – Bayview Apartment Building

The Bayview Apartment Building at 110 Esplanade Avenue was built  circa 1904 as the Extension Hotel.

The Bayview Apartment Building, 110 Esplanade Avenue, Ladysmith, B.C.
The Bayview Apartment Building, 110 Esplanade Avenue, Ladysmith, B.C.(photo: Mark Anderson)
The Bayview Apartments, 110 Esplanade Avenue, west elevation viewed from Methuen Street. (photo: Mark Anderson)
The Bayview Apartments, 110 Esplanade Avenue, west elevation viewed from Methuen Street. (photo: Mark Anderson)
The Bayview Apartments, 110 Esplanade Avenue, East elevation.
The Bayview Apartments, 110 Esplanade Avenue, East elevation.(photo: Mark Anderson)

The Bayview Apartment Building was added to the Ladysmith Community Heritage Register in 2017.

Here is a map showing the location of 110 Esplande:

Here is a Google Street View image of 110 Esplande:

Description of Historic Place

The Bayview Apartment Building is a brick, three-storey Edwardian structure located on the main highway through Ladysmith, just outside the downtown core. The historic place is confined to the building footprint.

Heritage Value

The Bayview Apartment Building is significant as a tangible reminder of the social and economic importance of hotels in Ladysmith history. Like most mining communities, early Ladysmith had a large population of single, often transient, men.

As affordable housing alternatives, hotels functioned as living quarters and, in the saloons and restaurants typically located on the
ground floor, as social centres.

Originally built around 1904 and substantially redeveloped around 1910, the Bayview Apartment Building is a very good example of Edwardian Commercial style. The building features the simplicity and overall restrained appearance typical of this style and stands in marked contrast to earlier, fussier Victorian styles.

The Bayview Apartment Building exemplifies the nature of Ladysmith’s earliest social and physical development. Like many other buildings in Ladysmith, this structure was moved from Extension (many more were moved from Wellington) around 1904. In effect, Ladysmith was an instant company town. The early presence of these relocated buildings gave the young town a sense of permanence, cohesion and civility not often associated with
pioneer mining towns.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Bayview Apartment Building include:

  • – all of the elements of an Edwardian era commercial building as expressed in the overall restrained
  • – appearance, simple form and massing, symmetrical façades, flat roof, brick construction on upper stories, quoined corners, articulated brick pattern below cornice arched window lintels and simple cornice.
  • – the building’s location on the main highway
Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap