One of Victoria’s grand dames will turn 100 this week.
It will happen quietly, without fanfare, bunting, cake or candles.
And that muted acknowledgement may be fitting considering the complex and difficult relationship the city has had with the Crystal Garden, which marks its centenary June 26.
The building, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway as a swimming pool, tropical garden and tea room, officially opened on June 26, 1925, two weeks after informally opening to allow locals to swim in its saltwater pool.
The occasion was deemed so important for the city, May Day celebrations were postponed until June 26 for a combined spectacle that was the social event of the season.
There was a public carnival, dignitaries, a pageant and a swim meet on the opening day.
Nothing similar is planned this week for the building designed by Francis Rattenbury and P.L. James. For many, that’s a shame.
Steve Barber, who retired as the City of Victoria’s senior heritage planner in 2014, said the Crystal Garden, which was built as the city’s first indoor pool and converted into a conservatory in 1980, hosted many social events over the years. “It was more than just a saltwater swimming pool. It also had a dance floor and that kind of thing,” he said.
Victoria architect Franc D’Ambrosio said the Crystal Garden is part of a “nucleus of historic buildings,” along with the Legislature, Empress Hotel and the CPR Steamship Building, part of Rattenbury’s greater Inner Harbour design.
D’Ambrosio said if it had been up to him, he would have spent what it took to return the Crystal Garden to its original purpose as a community pool and meeting area, rather than turning it into just another rentable space for the Victoria Conference Centre.
“Can you imagine having that pool in that location as a public amenity? It would be fantastic,” he said. “It could be a marvelous gathering spot.”
When it opened, the Crystal Garden was the centre of the city’s social life and included two ballrooms and a gymnasium. It was the setting for dances, beauty pageants and athletic competitions — Johnny Weissmuller, who would star as Tarzan in the movies, set a 100-yard indoor freestyle world swimming record in the pool.
In the 1977 book Crystal Garden: West Coast Pleasure Palace, Canadian writer and historian Pierre Berton called the building where he’d learned to swim and dance and escape the reality of the Great Depression a “fairyland.” “I knew her during the best years of my life, which were, I think, the best years of her life.”
Berton spent his adolescence in Victoria between 1932 and 1939, and said the glumness of the Depression faded at the Crystal Garden, “to be replaced with music and the scents and the sounds and the emotions of those days at the Crystal: the faint smell of chlorine and the taste of salt.”
Berton called returning to see the building in the 1970s, when it was “empty and shattered,” a dismaying experience. “She was one of the city’s greatest assets, a glittering compliment to the ivied Empress across the way. On all the West Coast there was nothing remotely resembling her.”
The closure of the Crystal Garden came shortly after the Canadian Pacific Railway, which built it, announced in 1964 it would allow its lease to expire after the second 20-year deal with the city ended in 1965.
The city was left trying to run a facility that was in dire need of renovation and expensive upkeep. As researcher and writer Carolyn Smyly noted in Crystal Garden: Pleasure Palace of the Pacific, the city “had neither the personnel, the expertise nor the tax incentive to operate the Crystal Garden as a full-time amusement centre.”
The city decided it would be more financially prudent to build a new pool than refurbish the Crystal Garden, leading to construction of Crystal Pool on Quadra Street.
The Crystal Garden was boarded up and stood empty until 1980, when it was sold to the province, which spent millions upgrading the building before it reopened as a conservatory with tropical plants and endangered animals.
By most accounts, that was a success, but in 2004, the provincial capital commission shut it down.
Two years later, after more than $20 million was spent to bring it back to life, it reopened as the B.C. Experience, an interpretive centre telling the story of the province, with movies and displays of the history and culture of B.C. and a giant topographical map at its centre.
But the exhibit filed for creditor protection two months and 24 days after opening, citing debts of $8.5 million owed to 228 creditors.
In 2008, the Crystal Garden was given back to the city in a land swap deal brokered by the province. The city spent $10 million to renovate and bring it under the control of the Victoria Conference Centre, to be used as additional meeting space.
Barber said it’s hard to fathom that the building was left neglected for so long, but it’s a “wonderful event space” with “glorious” natural light.
Nathan Gauld, manager of the Victoria Conference Centre, said the Crystal Garden has become a bit of a competitive advantage for a mid-sized conference centre, since it adds 25,000 square feet to the centre’s footprint.
“If we said we were 50,000 square feet, we might not get to bid on the business at all, but saying you’re a 75,000 square foot facility, you’re in the running,” he said.
Last year, the Crystal Garden hosted 27 events, or 87 active days, and this year, it has 32 events booked, representing 89 active days. Events range from graduations to gala dinners, fundraisers and trade shows.
Gauld said even its financial performance is improving, despite a difficult layout, leaks from the glass ceiling, noise and light pollution. “We’ve been able to reduce the operating cost for running the building over the years and it’s performing the best it ever has,” he said.
According to the City of Victoria’s 2025 budget, revenue for Crystal Garden is $271,420 while expenses — the largest being maintenance at $117,6660 — are $378,460.
Gauld said he still hears from people who remember the space as a tropical garden and want to come back.
“We still get monthly calls from people that were married in the Crystal Garden when it was a garden that would like to come back for anniversary photos or still think that it is a garden,” he said.
Thomas Soulliere, former director of parks, recreation and facilities for the City of Victoria who now works for the District of Oak Bay, said when the debate about replacing the Crystal Pool was raging, sinking the money into Crystal Garden to bring back a pool was a non-starter.
It was prohibitive for even the Crystal Pool to bring its aging mechanics and structure up to code to be able to continue, so it would have been so much worse for the 100-year-old Crystal Garden, he said.
While it will never again be a pool, it still has its uses, as far as D’Ambrosio is concerned.
“It could continue to be a public amenity,” he said. “Is it an extraordinary example of a building? No, it’s a colonial example. But for its time, it was appropriate.
“[When it was built] it was probably the Taj Mahal compared to the little wood frame cabins and stuff all around it.”
Do you have memories of the Crystal Garden? Send us a note at [email protected] with “Crystal Garden” in the subject line. We’ll publish some of our favourites.
