BC Electric Building
building in British Columbia, Canada
The BC Electric Building is a 22-storey office tower in Vancouver, British Columbia. The building was constructed as the headquarters of the BC Electric Company and was designed by Thompson Berwick & Pratt. The project's design architect was Ron Thom. In 1995, the building was converted from offices to residences and renamed the Electra.
History
The structure was built by John Laing & Sons in 1957 as the new headquarters for the BC Electric Company, under its president Dal Grauer. A few days after Grauer's death in 1961, it became part of a new provincial crown corporation named BC Hydro. The 22-storey, 89-metre (292 ft) building's commission was arranged by Charles Edward "Ned" Pratt.
At the time, it was claimed to be the tallest office building in the Commonwealth, although this was not true. After BC Hydro moved to new offices in Vancouver and Burnaby in the late 1990s, the building was sold, and in 1998, was renovated and converted primarily into residential condo space, although BC Hydro continues to operate the Dal Grauer Substation, whose space is integral with Electra.
While BC Electric's offices were in the building, ten large air horns on top of the structure played the first four notes of O Canada at noon every day.
The public source identifies “BC Electric Building” as building in British Columbia, Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Electric, Building and building.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5357233. Authority coordinates are 49.281, -123.125. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 1957, 1961 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “BC Electric Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.