When you drive over the Georgia Viaduct today, in the past it was Hogan’s Alley. The neighbourhood was a popular cultural hub before the mid-twentieth century to businesses such as Vie’s Chicken and Steak House on Union and the Pullman Porter’s Club on Main.

Hogan’s Alley is the unofficial name to the first concentrated Black Community in Vancouver. The first black immigrants arrived in British Columbia from California in 1858. Lots of immigrants settled in Victoria and Salt Spring Island but began migrating to Vancouver in the early 1900s. They were also joined by black homesteaders from Alberta who originally came from Oklahoma, and by black railroad porters who worked at the Great Northern Railway nearby.

We all know the Jimi Hendrix shrine by Chinatown, but did you know that the neighborhood was home to his Grandmother who was a cook at Vie’s Chicken and Steak House. Nora Hendrix was involved in the community from the 1920s through to the end. Hendrix was known to come and visit his Grandmother during his childhood.

Hogan’s Alley faced many difficulties as being perceived in newspapers as a centre of squalor, immorality and crime, to difficulties of obtaining mortgages or home improvements. Initially Vancouver wanted to construct a interurban freeway through Hogan’s Alley and Chinatown but it was stopped from construction. On the other hand, the Georgia Viaduct was completed in 1971.

In the process of the viaduct the western end of Hogan’s Alley was expropriated, and blocks of houses were demolished. Since then no identifiably Black neighbourhoods has emerged from Vancouver.

If you want to learn more here’s where all the information you’re reading came from today:

https://www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org/place-that-matters/hogans-alley/