Hogan's Alley

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

This episode of The Atlas Obscura Podcast explores Hogan's Alley, a historically significant Black neighborhood in Vancouver that was erased

Key takeaways

• Hogan's Alley was once a vibrant Black enclave in Vancouver, home to hundreds of residents including notable figures like Jimi Hendrix's grandmother.
• The neighborhood was systematically dismantled through urban planning decisions, such as rezoning and the construction of the Georgia Viaduct, erasing physical and cultural traces.

Main topics

• Reclamation of lost Black communities
• Urban redevelopment and historical erasure

Notable quotes

There's a feeling of sadness and longing for what those spaces could have been for people. And on the other hand, it's also a feeling of inspiration, of, you know, What can be created for a community when people have the desire to really build community, to build opportunities.

Conclusion

Hogan's Alley is more than a memorial—it's an evolving experiment in what

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:06) Hey y'all, it's Jerome. Here on Atlas Obscura, we try to cover places that are incredible, strange, and wondrous. But for a place to have those qualities, it first has to be shaped. This episode is going to be a little different. We get to stand with a place as it becomes something new. Speaker 1 (0:29) On the east side of Vancouver, there's a dream of a neighborhood slowly drawing itself back onto the map. It's not the easiest to see. Most people driving through the Strathcona neighborhood might miss it completely, as an elevated freeway whisks them away toward downtown. But for the city's residents, especially its Black residents, it's a dream to reclaim a home that was taken from them. This dream is called Hogan's Alley, and it aims to bring back a predominantly Black community to the heart of the city. But the question is, what will it look like? An homage to its heyday? A vision for a new Black Mecca? Or something else entirely? Only time and the community will tell. As well as the woman helming the effort, Jaka Bley. Speaker 3 (1:24) There's a feeling of sadness and longing for what those spaces could have been for people. And on the other hand, it's also a feeling of inspiration, of, you know, What can be created for a community when people have the desire to really build community, to build opportunities. Speaker 1 (1:50) I'm Jerome Campbell, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of incredible, strange, and wondrous places. Let's find out what's going on with Hogan's Alley. Speaker 1 (2:29) Rebuilding Hogan's Alley took a mountain of people and years of quiet work to piece the vision together. Jaco Bley came to the project in 2021 after hearing about the effort from a province away. Speaker 3 (2:43) I was not born in Vancouver. I actually moved out here to start this role as the first executive director for Hogan's Alley Society. I moved from Calgary, Alberta, which is just... province next door. I was really inspired to join this organization because of what the volunteer board and community organizers had been able to accomplish up until this point. And so the idea of being able to work on this day in, day out with a team, I just thought, what else could we accomplish to really make this dream come to life for people? Speaker 1 (3:20) The history of a Black enclave in this corner of Canada surprised Jaka. It surprises a lot of people. There's almost no physical evidence of the community left standing today. But there was still some evidence of its impact, starting with the people who'd actually lived it. Speaker 3 (3:40) Hogan's Alley first became real to me when I had the opportunity to meet one of the former residents of Hogan's Alley. Randy Clark is one of the descendants in our community and hearing, you know, his stories about growing up there and his family and what that community represented to him and his experience. And it's not necessarily perfect, but it's a place where there was that sense of community. Speaker 1 (4:13) Randy Clark's family history stretches back to 1858. when British Columbia's governor invited Black Californians fleeing intensifying racism in San Francisco to settle here. Some of those families put down roots on Salt Spring Island. Randy's was among them. By the early 1900s, that community had drifted to the mainland, into a stretch of Vancouver's Strathcona neighborhood. Black porters working the end of the line for the Great Northern Railway settled