May Wah Hotel

This building by W.E. Sproat for the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist League of Canada) may seem orphaned on the corner, but the other side of Gore Avenue was once the site of society buildings and wholesale grocers, and businesses ran the length of Pender Street into the residential neighbourhood. Much of this area was expropriated as part of the plan for urban renewal and was demolished in preparation to build a freeway in the 1960s. The design once featured an open balcony on the Gore Avenue façade and a corner pagoda on the roof. The balconies were closed during a restoration in the 1980s.