One of the early shop locations for the Dominion Blue Print & Drafting Co. was in the Ormidal Block 151 West Hastings. The 1912 image above shows the back breaking labour it took to install new sewage and roads back then.

A number of buildings on this block were built in the late 1890s, and an original Woodwards store was one of them. The building has been used as an art gallery for many years, but it started life in 1898 as the offices of the Province Newspaper, Walter Nichol's Victoria newspaper that moved into Vancouver and eventually took out Francis Carter-Cotton's rival News-Advertiser in 1924, moving to his smarter offices in the process. In 1926 'The Arcade' a retail centre that may have replaced one of the same name that had been built on Hastings at Cambie in 1894 by Harvey Haddon, originally from Nottingham in England. The Arcade took in the main floor of the Stock Exchange Building next door as well, and was designed by Townley and Matheson. Later it became the National Furniture Store.

Massive changes have occurred on the block in the past few years at one time almost everything was abandoned or so run down that it looked like it would be demolished or converted to housing. However, recent demand for character office space and the impact of the Woodwards redevelopment project have seen clean up and refurbishment of many of the buildings.

Source: Changing Vancouver