Argyle & Bellevue Avenues

Mid-century residential buildings

The waterfront block of Argyle Ave. and its surrounding area – especially Bellevue Avenue – between 21st and 22nd Streets in the Dundarave/Ambleside area of West Vancouver was rezoned for apartment buildings in 1959 so it’s no wonder it boasts some of the sweetest mid-century modern construction in Metro Vancouver.

With names like “The Crescent,” “Villa Maris” and “The Shoreland” these sleek residential concrete buildings wink back at the mid-century days of Miami modernism, towering next to the ocean with colorful edifices and stylish balcony balustrades, yet are still uniquely West Coast modern.

“The Crescent,” a curved 10-storey tower designed and built by Kenneth Gardner & Warnett Kennedy in 1961, was the area’s first high rise, the very first in West Vancouver, in fact.

A building boom followed through the rest of the decade and now several of these 1960s towers have been transformed into luxury seaside accommodations – including the blue circular “Shoreland Apartments” designed by Don McIntyre and built by the Logie Brothers in 1963, and the iconic pink palace, “Villa Maris”, also designed by Don McIntyre circa 1965 – just waiting for the right modernist tenant or buyer to come along and make them their own.