Body Heat

In 1903, Charles Woodward expanded his mail order catalogue service into a department store called Woodward's. By the 1950s, Woodward's had come to define one-stop shopping in Vancouver and its closure in 1993 only intensified the sense of dispossession already felt in the Downtown Eastside, an area afflicted by poverty, homelessness and drug addiction. The current redevelopment of Woodward's as a complex of multi-use buildings, designed by Henriquez Partners Architects, is an amazing project of urban renewal - and this is its story.