Welcome to the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum in Vancouver!
Walk through a doorway into Vancouver's past
Welcome to the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum in Vancouver!
Walk through a doorway into Vancouver's past
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Walk through a doorway into Vancouver's past
Walk through a doorway into Vancouver's past
“When it’s quiet at the old Hastings Mill Store you can hear the past whispering to you….”
On very quiet afternoons when light dances with shadow, you might sense a presence. Is it a spirit from the Great Vancouver Fire of June 13, 1886?
The story of the Great Fire is just one of many connected to the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum. A huge oxen yoke and early logging photographs bring lumber barons to mind. There are numerous artefacts from the steamship SS Beaver, “the lifeline of the coast,” that met a watery grave off Prospect Point in 1888.
Other unique heritage items include Vancouver’s first City Council Table, legendary lifeguard Serafim “Joe” Fortes’ oil lamp and an original full-size Hansom cab. There’s an assortment of Indigenous basketry and carvings, along with an eclectic array of fascinating curios donated by Vancouver settlers and their descendants over the years.
The iconic Hastings Mill Store stood at the foot of Dunlevy Street, east of Gastown, for more than 60 years. When the entire Hastings Mill townsite was slated for demolition in the late 1920s, a local lodge of born-in-BC women, the Native Daughters of B.C. Post No. 1, rose to the challenge of rescuing Vancouver’s oldest surviving building.
The store was barged to its current Alma Street location and re-opened as a museum in 1932. The Native Daughters of BC continue to own the building, and together with a dedicated team of volunteers from all walks of life, steward its amazing collection.
To learn more about the history of the Old Hastings Mill Store, please visit "Our History".
If you are interested in staffing at Vancouver's oldest surviving building, please visit our Volunteer page.
Our 150+ year old building is currently being restored to its original colours and getting the necessary repairs it needs and we need your help!
We will be adding more events to our calendar so check this page regularly for new events!
We acknowledge that the museum is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
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Old Hastings Mill Store Museum
1575 Alma Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6R 3P3, Canada