Like all of Vancouver, the West End was originally a forested wilderness. The area was purchased in 1862 by John Morton, Samuel Brighouse, and William Hailstone, three men known as the "Three Greenhorn Englishmen", or just the "
Three Greenhorns", a nickname they earned from others who thought they were buying a massive plot of wild land at an inflated price. The men had plans to establish a brickworks on the shore of Coal Harbour, and their land claim was originally staked with the hopeful intent of mining for porcelain clays, but the grade of clay was not fine enough for that use. When those plans failed (a lack of transportation being a key factor) they sold a good portion of the area, by then known as the Brickmaker's Claim, to Victoria investors who in turn tried to promote its development as New Liverpool. The only thing that happened with that scheme was a subdivision plan registered with the Land Titles office in New Westminster. Another name used for the property was the Brighouse Estate (Brighouse as a name came to refer to a particular part of
Richmond, where "Greenhorn"
J. Morton also owned property). One of the partners, observant that brick was a valuable building commodity despite the abundance of timber in the region, moved the brick-clay operations to
Sumas Mountain, establishing the community of
Clayburn, now a neighbourhood of
Abbotsford. Later, with the arrival of the
Canadian Pacific Railway, with its terminus at nearby
Coal Harbour, the West End became Vancouver's first upscale neighbourhood, home to the richest railroad families. Many of these families lived along Georgia Street, known at that time as "Blue Blood Alley" for all the posh mansions built there. Later mansions (including the Davie mansion) were built in then remoter areas of the West End as the financial district's land values displaced the high-toned residences. This role was ultimately dropped with the increasing vogue for the upscale
Shaughnessy neighbourhood, and as middle-class housing of various kinds began to fill out the West End. As the city grew, the West End became a transitory place for new arrivals from elsewhere in Canada, the United Kingdom, and later for immigrants from other countries, establishing a tradition of diversity. Following World War II, a significant German commercial community emerged along
Robson Street, giving birth to the nickname
Robsonstrasse, a name still occasionally used in marketing despite the loss of its original meaning.
Sex work displacement West End residents have been very active in shaping their neighbourhood and maintaining its liveability. In the 1970s, residents banded together to calm traffic that was using the neighbourhood as a shortcut between downtown Vancouver and the suburbs of the North Shore, across the
Lions' Gate Bridge. They also staged a successful, yet destructive "Shame the Johns" campaign to rid the West End of the sex work that was then visible in the neighbourhood. This campaign was formed by a group of politicians called the Concerned Residents of the West End (CROWE), prominently containing cisgender white gay men, who aided in the formation of a 1984 injunction granted by then-B.C. Supreme Court Justice Allan McEachern. This injunction banned sex workers from working west of Granville Street, which forcibly displaced them away from the relative safety and community support of
Davie Street. Following this, they were forced into
Yaletown, then
Mount Pleasant, where they were repeatedly protested by "Shame the Johns vigilantes", down East Broadway, and eventually into the
Downtown Eastside, where already vulnerable sex workers are more open to violence and abuse than ever before. These displacements were worse repetitions of earlier erasures that happened on
Dupont and Alexander Street. Further, this displacement largely targeted transgender,
two-spirit and First Nations women, replicated the colonial practices and dispossession of land from the Musqueam, Burrard, and Squamish First Nations. ==Demographics==