A century before artisan gift shops, trendy eateries or a craft brewery lined its red brick interior, Market Square was the spot where sealers, whalers and fur traders, (as well as squalid criminals, fortune-seekers and transients) would go to spend their hard-earned wages on vices like gambling, opium, liquor and women. And while the rough-hewn beginnings didn’t align with the original plan for Market Square, they actually defined it for many more years than expected.
The discovery of gold in the Fraser Canyon in 1858 caused an influx of 25,000 people to flood into Victoria, transforming it in just a few short weeks from a sleepy colonial outpost to a booming supply port. Reactively, Market Square immediately sprang up, housing clapboard wooden warehouses stuffed to the rafters with feed, lumber, dry goods, and other assorted gear needed for frontier life. But that’s not all it housed.
With sealing schooners, supply ships and whaling boats docking just a couple blocks away, Market Square also became the de facto “entertainment district” for both them and their ilk. While ship captains visited merchant shops to restock supplies, their crews would locate the various businesses offering liquor, opium, cards, and prostitutes where they’d consume, spend and gamble their wages away.
After the gold rush subsided in the mid-1860s, Market Square looked to re-invent itself as a genteel, white-only commercial hub; an Anglo-European marketplace, so to speak. And so, between 1870 and 1880, European owners hired Chinese bricklayers to replace the wooden structures and warehouses with a group of stately brick buildings meant to project order, respectability, and prosperity… but that’s not exactly how things turned out.
That’s because just one street over, Victoria’s burgeoning Chinatown shared many of the same illegal businesses (such as brothels, opium dens, gambling houses and speakeasies) that the “old” Market Square was known for. Despite the desire to make Market Square respectable, its sullied reputation, along with its neighbouring community, worked against it.
In fact, the illegal businesses within continued to thrive—some in the open, others behind unmarked doors— by catering to the steady flow of (white) sailors, labourers, or anyone else looking to spend gold or wages on nefarious activities. So while by day Market Square bustled with trade, after dark, it pulsed with vice, music, and more than a little violence; something that kept the upper class of Victoria far from entering its red brick walls.
A car park overlooking an abandoned Market Square in the 1960's
By the early 20th century, however, the square had lost its edge, and much of its clientele. The booming shipping economy shifted to new industrial areas, and the rise of automobiles and suburban shopping pulled commercial life out of Old Town. By the 1950s, Market Square was more that just a ghost of its former self; it was a bunch of condemned buildings rife with broken windows, crumbling bricks hidden beneath layers of grime and filth.
Then, two decades later, two developers and heritage advocates saw what others coudn’t see in Market Square: they saw potential. Rather than demolish the historic buildings, they restored them and and filled them with clever, eclectic businesses including Fat Phegee’s Fudge Factory, Noos Pizza, and The Sweet Tooth Saloon. Before long, the third-floor spaces previously housing brothels, gambling parlours and opium dens became office spaces and small businesses. Thanks to the Bawlf Brothers development, Market Square got a second lease on life.
Today, step into the middle of Market Square (from Johnson Street or Pandora Ave) and you’ll discover what is a rare find in Victoria; a quiet, hidden sanctuary in the middle of the city, one that locals know but most tourists unwittingly by.
But for those who make time to discover it, they’ll discover that by walking on the same wooden floor that sailor’s, sealers, gamblers—Chinese and European—in the 1800s walked upon, time will melt away, and that the history of Market Square will come alive once again.
Why not discover Market Square on one of HIDDEN VICTORIA’S guided walking tours? Our passionate guides love to show off the city’s quirky corners and share its obscure history with our guests! For more information, CLICK HERE.