Vancouver’s tilting homes are distinctive, but puzzling

The roads are so buckled that it seems as though an earthquake must have hit recently. Fences dont run straight, but roll along property perimeters in gentle waves.

And, on close inspection, many of the houses that line the lumpy roads and sit behind the wavy fences seem to be tilted to one side some to the east, some to the west, some to the south.

For people passing through this odd little area in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver between Main and Fraser, 15th and about 22nd the hobbit-like feel to the place is distinctive but puzzling.

Even those who live in the district arent always sure whats so different.

What they dont realize is that the area was known from the early days of Vancouvers existence as the Tea Swamp a small, mucky lake that provided a rare open clearing in the densely forested city-to-be where a rich variety of plants could grow. It was the engineering work of the areas beavers, who blocked some of the main streams that ran down the Mount Pleasant slope into False Creek.

Among the plants that flourished was a specific kind of rhododendron that produced something early settlers called Labrador tea, which First Nations groups (who passed by the area on an old route that is roughly where Kingsway runs now) gathered and used as a treatment for everything from whooping cough to arthritis to hair loss.

The bog also attracted birds of all kinds. Pioneers who lived in the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s bragged about the teal or grouse they caught there.

But, in a growing city, that land wasnt left to the birds and the rhododendron bushes for long. Some long-ago genius put in drainage that turned the swampy bog into something that looked like solid ground. And people started building houses and roads, without doing anything in particular to anchor them. That was true until as recently as the 1960s, as the many off-kilter Vancouver Specials in the area demonstrate.

The result: heaved streets, wavy fences, tilting houses.

Dylan Cartier lives in one of them, on the top floor of a bungalow his father, Barry, owns. It tilts south. When something falls on the floor, you know where its going to end up, he says matter-of-factly.

View original post here:
Vancouver’s tilting homes are distinctive, but puzzling