{"id":247307,"date":"2010-01-29T15:25:16","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T20:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"1757 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-01-29T15:25:16","modified_gmt":"2010-01-29T20:25:16","slug":"the-sam-kee-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/247307","title":{"rendered":"The Sam Kee building"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vancouver<\/a>, Canada<\/a> | Architectural Oddities<\/a><\/p>\n

Chang Toy was put in a difficult position. The city of Vancouver had rudely reclaimed much of Toy’s property on Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown, for the widening and expansion of the street. Expropriated 24 feet of the lot, they left Toy with only a 4’11” strip of property under his name, no doubt assuming the strip would be abandoned. <\/p>\n

Not so, Chang a successful business man (he was the principal partner in the Sam Kee Company, which was a very successful import and export business, making between $150,000 and $180,000 in 1907) was no pushover. During the anti-Asian riots in 1907 Chang used his wealth to buy out the local gun-shop and distribute the pistols among the Asian merchants in Chinatown.<\/p>\n

Chang, being the enterprising businessman he was, decided to build on the slim property anyway, no doubt with a bit of spite aimed at the city. <\/p>\n

In 1913, Chang hired architects Brown and Gillam, who cleverly found a way to make the building bigger, by adding a 2 foot overhang from the second story, and a basement which extended under the sidewalk. Though slim the building was busy, with the basement originally used as public baths, the top story for housing and the main floor used for shops, at one point home to 13 businesses at once.<\/p>\n

It is also said that a tunnel runs underneath the basement of the building from nearby Opium dens in “Shanghai Alley”, used as an escape route when they were raided by the police. The building is also the only glass sidewalk (meaning squares of glass embedded in the ground) fronted building remaining in Chinatown. <\/p>\n

Though it claims the Guinness world record for thinnest commercial building, there has been challenge from both the Pittsburgh’s Skinny Building (at 5’2 its base is bigger but it doesn’t have an overhang) and a William G. Singer building at 15th Street in South Penn Square in Philadelphia which claims to be only 4 feet thick. <\/p>\n

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Vancouver, Canada | Architectural Oddities Chang Toy was put in a difficult position. The city of Vancouver had rudely reclaimed much of Toy’s property on Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown, for the widening and expansion of the street. Expropriated 24 feet of the lot, they left Toy with only a 4’11” strip of property under […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}