UBC's 100-year-old fire hall moves again, taking a 1.5-km trip to its new home

The University of British Columbia's historic Old Fire Hall moved again on Monday (November 9): the red-brick building from 1926 slowly made its way 1.5 kilometres along campus roads to a new graduate student residence in the Lower Mall Precinct, where it will become a community gathering place for graduate students. (Image: the Old Fire Hall on its way across campus on Monday. Photo: Alpha Lam / UBC News.)

A campus celebrity

The Old Fire Hall is one of the oldest surviving buildings on UBC's Vancouver campus, built just one year after the Point Grey campus opened, and it served as the campus fire hall for more than five decades. Features such as its hose-drying tower, vehicle bays and upstairs living quarters still show its original purpose. After the fire department moved to its current location in 1982, the building was repurposed as studios and offices for the department of art history, visual art and theory; it was painted bright red in the 1990s to highlight its heritage value and has been a familiar campus landmark ever since.

Its first move in 2024 drew a crowd

The old building already starred in a campus spectacle in November 2024, when it was carefully lifted from its foundation and transported by flatbed truck to a temporary location, drawing crowds of students and staff. It was then shrink-wrapped and parked while the Lower Mall Precinct was prepared for redevelopment.

Its new home: a $562-million graduate residence

The new residence complex costs $562 million and will include six buildings, including an eight-storey hybrid mass timber and wood-frame structure. Once complete, it will provide about 1,521 beds (1,346 net new and 175 replacement beds), 37 childcare spaces and a 250-seat dining hall. The site was previously home to St. John's College, an international graduate residential college that served the campus for 28 years and housed 175 students. Shannon Dunn, associate vice-president of student housing and community services, said she looked forward to watching the piece of UBC history become a welcoming place of connection for graduate students. The first residents are expected in 2028, with the final three residence buildings opening in 2029.