Whimsical Statues Guard This Urban Staircase. Who Built It?

The expansive staircase starts at Great Northern Way just north of Vancouver’s False Creek flats. It travels up the hill, connecting walkers with 6th Ave. At the top of the steps is a small garden area, a little free library and a tree hung with pink Christmas decorations.

Along the way, the staircase is guarded by whimsical statues: a headless, armless Venus de Milo. A lion in repose. A cherub surrounded by crystalline shapes.

This mossy staircase was built in the early 1970s by Aquilini and Zen, developers who erected and owned many rental buildings in the 1970s and 1980s. The stairs were built at the same time a large apartment building was constructed at 774 Great Northern Way.

A 1972 Province column includes a brief anecdote about the steps and how "local PR girl" Julia Switzer counted them, found there were 37 steps, and suggested adding two more so the building could be marketed with the tagline "the 39 steps," referring to the 1935 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

TikTok creator Morgan Pitcher, who makes short videos about B.C. history, urban design and politics under the handle @Uncouver, took a look at the staircase in a 2023 video, where he noted the steps get a brief mention in a report about the history of the area created for the City of Vancouver by heritage consultant Donald Luxton.

That report details the history of the Eastern Core, an area of the city that was once the eastern extension of False Creek before part of the creek was filled in and the area became home to rail yards, the city dump, a sawmill and factories.

Today the False Creek Flats have been earmarked for light industrial, manufacturing and other commercial uses. The area is also home to Emily Carr University of Art and Design’s new campus. Residential zoning starts at the edge of the False Creek Flats, and Great Northern Way is the border between commercial and residential zoning.

Three ads in the Province published in 1972 from a cement vendor, a furniture rental company and an electrical contractor congratulate Aquilini and Zen Construction for completing "The 39 Steps Apartment Complex."

The building was constructed during a building boom for rental apartments in B.C., spurred by government tax incentives designed to boost rental construction.

In the 1980s, real estate development would turn away from rentals to focus on condo buildings — a transition that would eventually lead to a huge deficit in rental construction that still affects B.C.’s unaffordable housing market today.

BC Assessment records show "The 39 Steps" building is now operated as a strata condo.

Aquilini Development is now one of B.C.’s largest and most well-known real estate companies, but in the early 1980s Giovanni Zen and Luigi Aquilini — the owners of over two dozen apartment buildings in the Vancouver area — were the subject of complaints from the many renters who saw their rents rise by 20 to 30 per cent after the Social Credit government of the day abolished rent controls. The Zen family continued to be the focus of complaints about rental standards into the mid-2000s.

If the statues that decorate the staircase look familiar, that’s because they were made by Ital Decor, the Burnaby company that made many of the statues that decorate thousands of "Vancouver Specials" — boxy houses built across East Vancouver and Burnaby in the 1960s and ’70s. Ital Decor makes statues ranging from saints and gods to dwarves, gnomes, animals and plants. In 2023, Tyee reporter Christopher Cheung wrote about the company’s role in Vancouver’s unique urban history.

Today, the "39 Steps" staircase looks a little worse for wear, with some paving stones missing and cracked, although their mossiness makes the stairs feel mysterious and perhaps slightly haunted. There are no guardrails, and people descend the stairs very gingerly.

When The Tyee asked city staff about the condition of the stairs, communications staff said the city is not responsible for their upkeep, but that property use inspectors would be dispatched to take a closer look.