Brown Bag Picnic

The ever-popular "Brown Bag History" series at Revelstoke Museum & Archives will continue this summer as "Brown Bag Picnic." We will hold it in the Heritage Garden, weather permitting, beginning this Wednesday, July 2 at 12:15. The first topic will be "Downtown Revelstoke." I'll explain why the downtown is where it is now, instead of in the original location on Front Street, on the riverbank. The explanation includes a lawsuit between original townsite developer A.S. Farwell and the Canadian Pacific Railway. I'll also talk about some of the early businesses in the downtown, and the corduroy road on Mackenzie Avenue. And let's not forget the smelter at the end of Campbell Avenue, and the approximately 10 city blocks that eroded into the river.

Revelstoke's downtown has a very large concentration of late 1890s and early 1900s building, and I'll talk about the history of some of these buildings. Did you know that the Roxy theatre building was built in 1905 as Lawrence Hardware? The original facade was High Victorian style, and it was converted to an Art Deco style in 1938 when it opened as the Avolie Theatre. Did you know that the first Catholic church was built in 1893 at the corner of First and Mackenzie, where the Royal Bank is now? Legend has it that if you lifted a floorboard of the church you could see running water beneath.