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,” by G. Leach Consulting, circa 1963, and the iconic 1965 pink palace, “Villa Maris” – just waiting for the right modernist tenant or buyer to come along and make them their own.