Customer Reviews

Downtown Vancouver (Images of America: Washington)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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As almost a life long resident of Vancouver, having moved here in 1965 this is "Home". I remember when this town was so much smaller and still see a lot of the remnants of its history. Only complaint is I wish it were twice as large in volume/content and just double the price. I've ordered the volumes on Camas and Washougal, and wait eagerly as I'm currently living in Camas in a home built in 1908 by owners of the paper mill of that period. I only hope the rest of the series is half the quality of this book.

This was a GREAT book. It tells us why Esther Short Park was named so (got some interesting stuff about Esther!), as well as the naming of some of our better known streets (Fourth Plain and Mill Plain... I always wondered about those). Also contains a lot of history on Officers' Row and the fort, and its inhabitants. I knew nothing about Mother Joseph before reading this book, and now I know how she influenced the building of Vancouver. Of particular interest to me, the book gives a lot of the little reasons why Portland ended up growing so much bigger than Vancouver, even though Vancouver is older.

This book has a few tidbits about people in Vancouver that remind me how very much that they weren't just names in a history book. When the law declared that the St. James Church belonged to the Army and not to the Catholic Church (the book didn't give the year, but with searching online, found out this was in the 1890s), a young Army officer went to the church to help the priest move out, and I laughed out loud when I read how the angry priest reacted to the officer's offer of help. I also liked the bit about the practical joke a pilot made at the dedication festival for Pearson Field in 1925.

My husband and I only noticed one thing that could have been a glaring typo. It was in reference to a photo (on page 25) telling us where Pearson Field would later be.... however, the book said the photo was taken in the 1970s. We're guessing it had been actually taken in the 1870s, as Pearson Field was dedicated in 1925 and it has never changed locations. If it had been taken in the 1970s, we would have seen Pearson Field in the photo.

Like the other reviewer said, I wish there were more in this book. However, what is there is nicely laid out. Each section begins with a page of history in text, followed by pages of photos with descriptive captions.

The Fort Vancouver library system has this book, by the way. ^_^