A century ago, the original Georgia Street viaduct was considered among Vancouver’s finest structures, but today’s viaducts have since been cast as an urban scar, hulking slabs of concrete destined for the wrecking ball.

If the city decides to demolish the viaducts, downtown Vancouver will lose two major commuter arteries, one on Georgia Street that moves traffic east and the other on Dunsmuir Street for westbound vehicles.

Supporters of the plan say the trade-off would be an abundance of reclaimed public space — where roads would connect communities without impacting those who dwell in traffic-choked neighbourhoods, where there would be more green space, expanded pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, and even a trendy wharf.

It’s an urban planner’s dream, but there are still many decisions to make about funding and traffic flow, and whether those concrete slabs will be replaced by a wall of condominium towers.

The Georgia Street Viaduct’s first iteration, the Georgia-Harris Viaduct, opened in July 1915. It was designed to carry traffic over the Canadian Pacific railyards on the north shore of False Creek.

So celebrated was the event, that the city threw a massive parade. Scores of brightly decorated automobiles rolled across the viaduct with horns honking and drivers cheering.

By 1960, the old viaduct was falling apart, and five years later a new $10-million replacement was approved by voters in a plebiscite.

Shortly after it was approved, then-Mayor Bill Rathie announced he wanted to add a $145-million, six-lane freeway through East Vancouver and along the downtown waterfront. But that didn’t sit well with the residents along the freeway’s path in Chinatown, Strathcona and Gastown.

So in 1972, when the new viaduct opened, protesters gathered en masse. Demonstrators spat on a limousine carrying Mayor Tom Campbell over the viaduct. Others jumped on the hood of the limo, demanding that plans for the freeway be abandoned.

The Museum of Vancouver still has a scale model of what the city would have looked like had that freeway been built, showing how it would have plowed through Union and Adanac Streets in East Vancouver to join with the Trans-Canada Highway in Burnaby.

City officials ultimately gave in to public outrage and rescinded plans for a freeway. Still, a bit of Vancouver’s history was lost during construction of the viaducts.

Several houses and businesses on Union, Prior and Main were demolished for the approaches to the viaduct, including most of Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver’s historic black neighbourhood.

Hogan’s Alley was located at Park Lane, an alley that ran through the southwestern corner of Strathcona, and has since become known as a place frequented by rock legend Jimi Hendrix, whose grandmother lived in the area.

When a city builds a freeway that slices through and destroys poor neighbourhoods, a shared psychology develops that they are needed. That is the opinion of Brent Toderian, a former city planner, who says it is time to correct the city’s past mistake and re-connect the neighbourhoods.

“We didn’t build freeways, so we don’t have that angst about tearing them down. But we built these viaducts in anticipation of (the freeways),” said Toderian. “We never needed these. They are leftover thinking. And they are not part of the new thinking of how our smartly designed city should be.”

Toderian has some concerns about the placement and number of condominium towers that will inevitably be built should the space be freed up.