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Somehow, despite a shameless selection of the finest merchandise in town, South Granville has maintained its neighbourhood feel. If anything it’s been enhanced by such additions as the lovingly restored Stanley Theatre.
Volumes upon volumes of travel literature have spread the news world wide that South Granville is one of the finest retail, dining and gallery districts anywhere. Happy travellers from around the globe keep that word going. A rep like that can be a heavy burden, but this 11-block stretch of culture and class carries it with nary a notice. Which might have something to do with the fact that all those kind words were very well-earned. Every city worth its road salt needs a neighbourhood like this. You know the kind. They sell Prada, Picasso and pretty Belgian truffles, all within a handful of beautified blocks. This one, separated from Vancouver’s downtown core by the Granville Street Bridge and just a window-shop away from the Granville Island Public Market, is all that and more. It’s not just bona fide retail destinations like Boboli, Martha Sturdy Originals, Restoration Hardware and Meinhardt Fine Foods that attract the pretty people to this stretch of Granville Street between Fifth Avenue and 16th. Somehow, despite a shameless selection of the finest merchandise in town, South Granville has maintained its neighbourhood feel. If anything it’s been enhanced by such additions as the lovingly restored Stanley Theatre, where Vancouverites queue on the sidewalk outside to enjoy the Arts Club’s musical theatre in a style to which local theatre goers should long have been accustomed.
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This neighbourhood also attracts visitors from the world over with its Gallery Row, a strip of impressive rooms that feature the finest in traditional and contemporary art and photography plus the very best in Northwest Coast Native art. That strip of galleries built this area’s reputation back when the flagship Chapters bookstore at Broadway and Granville was still the site of the quixotic Aristocrat Restaurant slinging burgers and fries on one of the most coveted pieces of real estate in town. Today the galleries are joined by a different sort of restaurant, like West, recently named one of the 10 best eateries worldwide, but also like the coffee shops and bakeries built as much for looking out at the couture-clad shoppers as for eating in. There is also now a Chocolate Row, of all things, between 11th and 14th Avenues, where Bernard Callebaut, Purdy’s and Le Chocolat Belge offer the finest confections in town. This is a neighbourhood that has grown exactly as it was supposed to. It is a decidedly design-conscious district that attracts money and celebrity but somehow manages to feel like home. It has partnered dramatic new facades with elegant old buildings and put a pretty, comfortable face on it all. But chocolates and skinny Italian fashions all in the same block? That can’t be a good idea.
