Granville Street runs generally north–south through the centre of Vancouver, passing through several neighbourhoods and commercial areas, differing appreciably in their land value and the wealth of their residents. Granville runs northeast–southwest:
through a pedestrian-friendly area known as the Granville Mall with part of it formally designated as the Granville Entertainment District ; here, numerous shops, restaurants, and the city's top dance clubs, bars and entertainment venues are located
near the Fraser River, where it merges with another section of South-West Marine Drive
Finally, Granville Street ends near the Fraser River at the approximate location of 72nd Ave., then merges with Southwest Marine Drive and continues southeasterly towards the Arthur Laing Bridge that leads to Richmond and the Vancouver International Airport.
History
19th century
The community was known as "Gastown" after its first citizen - Jack Deighton, known as "Gassy" Jack. "To gas" is period English slang for "to boast and to exaggerate". In 1870, the community was laid out as the "township of Granville" but everybody called it Gastown. The name Granville honours Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, who was British Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time of local settlement. In 1886, it was incorporated as the city of Vancouver, named after Captain George Vancouver, who accompanied James Cook on his voyage to the West Coast and subsequently spent two years exploring and charting the West Coast.
20th century
During the 1950s, Granville Street attracted many tourists to one of the world's largest displays of neon signs. Towards the middle of the twentieth century, the Downtown portion of Granville Street had become a flourishing centre for entertainment, known for its cinemas, restaurants, clubs, the Vogue and Orpheum theatres, and, later, arcades, pizza parlours, pawn stores, pornography shops and strip clubs. By the late 1990s, Granville Street suffered gradual deterioration and many movie theatres, such as "The Plaza, Caprice, Paradise, Granville Centre have all closed for good", writes Dmitrios Otis in his article "The Last Peep Show." In the early 2000s, the news of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympic Games, to be hosted in Whistler, a series of gentrification projects, still ongoing as of 2006, had caused the shutdown of many more businesses that had heretofore become landmarks of the street and of the city.
21st century
Also, Otis writes that "once dominated by movie theatres, pinball arcades, and sex shops by nightclubs and bars, as transforms into a booze-based 'Entertainment District'." In April 2005, Capitol 6, a beloved 1920s-era movie theatre complex closed its doors. By August 2005, Movieland Arcade, located at 906 Granville Street became "the last home of authentic, 8 mm 'peep show' film booths in the world". On July 7, 2005, the Granville Book Company, a popular and independently owned bookstore was forced to close due to the rising rents and regulations the city began imposing in the early 2000s in order to "clean up" the street by the 2010 Olympics and combat Vancouver's "No Fun City" image.. Landlords have been unable to find replacement tenants for many of these closed locations; for example, the Granville Book Company site was still boarded up and vacant as of July 12, 2006. While proponents of the Granville gentrification project in general claim that the improvements made to the street will only benefit its residents, the customers frequenting the clubs and the remaining theatres and cinemas, maintain that the project is a temporary solution, since the closing down of the less "classy" businesses, and the build-up of Yaletown-style condominiums in their place, will not eliminate the unwanted pizzerias, corner-stores and pornography shops - and their patrons - but will simply displace them elsewhere.
