Thirteen standout brick buildings across Langley, the Fraser Valley, and Vancouver. What makes each one last, and what local homeowners can learn from them.
Good brickwork doesn't ask for attention. It just stands there, decade after decade, looking like it always did. The buildings below have been doing exactly that, some for over a century, through wet Fraser Valley winters, earthquakes, and everything else the coast throws at masonry.
We've put the local spots first. Most of them you've driven past without stopping to look at the brickwork. Worth a second look.
1. Fort Langley village heritage commercial block, Glover Road (early 1900s)
The core of Fort Langley village along Glover Road has a cluster of Edwardian brick commercial buildings that survived when most of the township was built in wood. The old bank buildings, former hotel sites, and storefronts from the 1900s-1920s are brick construction in a small-town commercial style: single and double storey, flat parapets, corbelled brick cornices, and large wood-framed display windows set into brick piers.
These buildings have absorbed a lot of Fraser Valley weather over a century. The ones that have been looked after are in excellent shape. A few show what happens when pointing gets ignored: the mortar washes out, water gets in behind the brick, and spalling follows. The heritage character of the Fort Langley village depends on keeping this masonry in good order.
2. Fort Langley National Historic Site (1827, reconstructed 1958)
The HBC fort at 23433 Mavis Avenue is one of the oldest European settlements on the BC mainland. The current reconstruction dates from the 1950s, but it documents in detail how early builders here used masonry where it mattered most: chimneys, hearths, and foundations. The Big House has large brick fireplaces built to handle the constant heat cycling of a working fur trade operation, with corbelled caps, proper flaunching at the roofline, and tight joints throughout.
This is also where BC was proclaimed a Crown Colony in November 1858, during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. The chimney and hearth brickwork at the site is worth looking at closely. It reflects a practical understanding of what masonry does that timber can't: contain heat, resist fire, and handle moisture without rotting.
3. Heritage brick farmhouses, Langley Township (1880s-1910s)
Scattered across Langley Township's agricultural land reserve are a handful of brick farmhouses from the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Settlers arriving from Ontario, Britain, and the American Midwest brought brick-building traditions, and a few of those families built their Fraser Valley homesteads in brick when they could. The brick was typically sourced from New Westminster brickworks or fired from local Fraser Valley clay deposits.
These aren't large or formal houses. They're working farmhouses with thick load-bearing walls, small windows, and brick chimneys designed to last through heavy use. The ones still standing have outlasted every wood-frame building around them. You'll spot them along agricultural roads in the older parts of the Township, sometimes with newer wood additions that make the original brick core easy to identify. A two-storey red brick house sitting alone in the middle of a Langley field is almost always one of these.
4. Cloverdale historic downtown, Surrey (1910s-1920s)
The old Cloverdale town centre, just over the Langley border in south Surrey, has a compact heritage commercial strip on 56th Avenue that doesn't get nearly enough attention. The brick buildings here are single-storey storefronts and small two-storey blocks, built in the 1910s and 1920s when Cloverdale was a busy agricultural service town for the Fraser Valley.
The scale is modest but the brickwork is honest. Flat-topped parapets with corbelled caps, brick pilasters between shopfronts, and a mix of buff and red brick that reflects the range of materials available to Fraser Valley builders at the time. For anyone living or working between Langley and Surrey, it's worth a slow drive through to see what early 20th-century Fraser Valley brick construction actually looked like at street level.
5. Historic Columbia Street, New Westminster (1880s-1910s)
New Westminster was BC's first capital and has some of the oldest surviving commercial brick construction in the province. Columbia Street's heritage block includes buildings from the 1880s through the 1910s, laid in a range of brick styles and bond patterns that trace three decades of development in Fraser Valley brickwork.
After a major fire in 1898 levelled much of the downtown, the city rebuilt in brick specifically to resist future fires. That rebuild created a concentrated stretch of brick commercial buildings that still anchors the historic downtown. The quality of brickwork across the block varies noticeably as you walk it, reflecting the different bricklayers and building budgets of each structure.
6. Carnegie Centre, Vancouver (1903)
The corner of Main and East Hastings. Built as Vancouver's first public library using a Carnegie grant, this is one of the most recognisable red brick buildings in the city. The Romanesque Revival style calls for a lot of brick: round arches, heavy corbelling under the cornice, and pressed red brick laid in a running bond with tight joints. It's now a community centre.
Over 120 years later, the wall faces are still plumb, the arches haven't crept, and the mortar joints are still sound in most sections. That comes down to a proper foundation, quality pressed brick that resists water absorption, and lime mortar flexible enough to move with the building without cracking the units.
7. Yaletown Warehouse District, Vancouver (1890s-1910s)
Hamilton, Mainland, and Homer streets south of downtown. The CPR built this whole district as its freight and service hub, and the warehouses they put up were functional red brick with heavy timber framing inside. They weren't trying to be fancy. They just needed walls that could take a beating.
The brick here is load-bearing in a way you don't see in modern construction. Walls thick at the base, thinner at the top, with courses of header brick tying the wythes together. Several of these buildings are now restaurants and offices, and the brick exteriors are some of the best-preserved examples of late Victorian commercial masonry in BC.
8. The Landing, 375 Water Street, Gastown (1905)
Six stories of red brick on Water Street, built as a wholesale warehouse and still standing. The arched ground-floor openings and the way the brick corbels out at the cornice to support the parapet are textbook Chicago-style commercial brick construction. The building was derelict for a while before a careful restoration in the 1980s.
Where they repointed, they matched the original soft lime-based mortar and kept the joint profile consistent with the original tooling. The repairs blend almost invisibly into the original wall. That's what a good repointing job looks like.
9. Hotel Europe, Gastown (1908)
The wedge-shaped building at 43 Powell Street, often described as Vancouver's first modern hotel. Its exterior is white glazed brick and terracotta rather than the usual red. Glazed brick is fired with a ceramic coating that seals the face against water, making it harder to spall and much easier to clean than standard brick.
The curved corner is a good example of what a skilled bricklayer can do. Each course around the curve uses slightly tapered brick to keep the joints even. The building has been a designated heritage site since 1984.
10. Woodward's Building facade, East Hastings, Vancouver (1903)
The original Woodward's department store was one of the most recognisable red brick buildings on Hastings Street. When the site was redeveloped in the 2000s, the heritage brick facade on the Abbott Street side was retained and incorporated into the new W development. The contrast between the old brick exterior and the new glass tower behind it makes the quality of the original construction obvious.
Heritage facade retention is a real masonry challenge. The original wall has to be temporarily shored up, the rest of the building stripped away behind it, and then the brick tied back into the new structure without disturbing the face. It shows how well-laid brick can outlast the building it was part of.
11. Strathcona neighbourhood, East Vancouver (1890s-1910s)
Vancouver's oldest surviving residential neighbourhood has a concentration of brick homes along Keefer, Union, Prior, and Hawks that you won't find anywhere else in the city. Two and three-storey brick terrace houses built by working families in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, most still in good shape.
Many have had repointing done over the decades, with mixed results. The ones repointed with a lime-compatible mortar are still in excellent shape. The ones that got Portland cement forced in are showing the cracking and spalling that follows. Same issue we see on older Langley homes.
12. St. James' Anglican Church, Vancouver (1935-1937)
Corner of Cordova and Gore, a few blocks east of Gastown. The Byzantine-style design uses a vast quantity of brick, both for the structural walls and for the distinctive arched detailing around the windows and doors. The copper roof turns green over the brick walls in a combination that looks better with every decade.
The walls are thick and the arches are large, all built by hand during a period when brick was still the default material for institutional construction. It's a registered heritage site and one of the most photographed church exteriors in the city.
13. Roedde House Museum, West End, Vancouver (1893)
At 1415 Barclay Street, tucked into a residential block of the West End. One of the very few surviving Victorian brick homes in a neighbourhood that lost most of its period housing to apartment development in the 1950s and 60s. Designed by Francis Rattenbury, who also designed the BC Legislature in Victoria.
The brick is load-bearing, the foundation is stone, and the decorative brickwork around the bay windows and under the eaves was laid by hand. It's a reminder of what residential brick construction looked like before wood-frame became standard. The house is now a museum and open to the public.
What these buildings teach us
The common thread is straightforward: durable brickwork starts with good materials, a proper base, and joints that are cut and packed correctly. The buildings still standing in good shape after a century got those basics right. The ones showing their age are usually the ones where repairs were done with the wrong mortar, or where water was allowed to work behind the face.
If you've got a brick home or building in Langley or the Fraser Valley and you're wondering whether the masonry is holding up, the same principles apply. A look at the joints, the face of the brick, and the drainage around the base tells most of the story. We're happy to come out and take a look.