A no messing around guide to the coolest things to eat, drink and do in Vancouver and beyond. Community. Not clickbait.

The ‘Bottle Dash’ Houses That Still Glitter In The Vancouver Sun

DSC_1026

You have passed them a thousand times and not even noticed. Then one sunny winter day a glint of light catches your eye. Why is that older stucco dwelling sparkling in the sunlight? Congratulations, you have just seen your first bottle-dash house!

If you are not familiar with the form, buildings with bottle-dash have bits of glass – most often brown beer, clear milk, green pop and blue milk of magnesia bottles – embedded in their exterior stucco finish instead of the more commonly used rock bits (rock-dash). It is commercially known as ‘Sparkle Stucco’ but also commonly referred to as ‘beer bottle’, ‘broken bottle’ and ‘crushed bottle’ stucco. At first glance when seen from a distance it can appear a little drab (save for a sunny day). The delight lies in closer inspection…

Bottledashdetail

When I first wrote about the stuff some four years ago I was surprised to find little information about it. I discovered this is still the case while researching this article for Scout. I still do not know where, how or why it was invented. And who was the first person that thought adding shards of glass to stucco was a good idea?!

Luckily, I was able to gather some new insight into bottle-dash due to thoughtful responses to my original blog post. I discovered I’m not the only one fascinated by this interesting exterior finish. The majority of the comments recalled people’s personal experiences with and memories of bottle-dash houses. One responder recalled that as a child, Vancouver was “sparkle town”.

IMG_5031

Sadly, what most Vancouverites know about stucco exteriors comes from the failure of the 1980s leaky condo era. This is unfortunate, because stucco has a long and storied history. Stucco – in some form – goes back to ancient times.

Basically, stucco is comprised of an aggregate, a binder and water. It is applied wet in three coats and hardens to a very dense solid. It’s the finish coat where colour and texture can be added and creativity can shine. For ‘dash’ stucco, after the first two coats are applied and dried, a final mixture of cement and lime is added, and while still fresh, aggregate (usually bits of rock) is “dashed” or thrown onto it with a scoop. Finally, the dash is pressed into the stucco with a trowel.

At some point in the stucco and dash game someone came up with a dash variant utilizing broken glass bottles. Crushed glass was added to a white quartz aggregate to provide some colour and sparkle to the stucco finish. Bottle-dash stucco shows up in both new construction and retrofitted on older houses starting in the late 1930s and 1940s. Examples are found all over Canada, but mostly in the western provinces. (They also appear in the U.S., especially on the west coast.) While bottle-dash is not unique to Vancouver, it certainly flourished here. In Metro Vancouver, the popularity of bottle-dash stucco lasted until the 1960s.

For older structures (see photo below), rock-dash or bottle-dash was an inexpensive way of insulating houses. The “stucco-ization” of older wood frame houses was encouraged by the government with Federal government grants available to homeowners through the 1970s to promote its use.

IMG_5023

Local historian John Atkin further explained that the application of exterior stucco was also seen as a way to “quickly modernize the house and hide the signs of renovations – especially as steel and aluminum windows were being promoted by the same grant program to replace ‘old-fashioned’ wood windows”. Retrofitting new windows of a different proportion often left homeowners with ugly patches in the siding. Stucco could hide such renovation scars. A house “modernized” with a bottle-dash (or other dash) stucco exterior requires little, if any, maintenance. Stucco exteriors from this period (1930s to 1960s) are very durable, as some current homeowners can attest to as they frustratingly try to remove it during renovations.

A reader comment on my 2014 blog post revealed that local company, Stucco Supply Co., was the local distributor for Sparkle Stucco. They started business in 1937 at East 6th and Scotia, coincidentally in the same brick building that originally housed Vancouver Breweries Ltd (now known as the Brewery Creek Building). Glass was crushed at this location to be used for bottle-dash. The company stayed at that location until 1950, at which time Stucco Supply Company – “stucco dash of all types” – moved to 937 Main Street. The last appearance for the company is in the 1970 City Directory, coinciding with the construction of the current Georgia Viaduct. (Millross Community Gardens is now located on this property.)

Bottle-dash is not just another sparkly, pretty face. It has a dark side as well. As one can imagine, the dangers of children playing around a house covered in broken glass were great. A raucous game of tag or some ill-placed rough housing could result in tears and the loss of a layer of skin on tender arms and legs. A friend of mine has a visible scar from such an incident 40 years ago.

My own memories of bottle-dash stucco centered on my great aunt’s house located in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood of Vancouver. The house was purchased as a new build in 1946 already covered in the bottle-dash stucco. The exterior of her house was similar to the house above – from a distance it was spotty, light reddish brown. But up close it was completely different story!

Predominated by bits of brown, clear and green glass, my great aunt’s house also had the occasional shard of blue glass dotting its rough surface. As children, these bits of coloured glass fascinated my sister and me. We were often scolded for trying to collect the tiny treasures. My mother once told me that when she was young, she recalls rare instances when bits of red glass were found. I made several attempts to try and find the rare bits of red in the sea of coloured glass – a futile effort (most likely picked out by a previous generation). So I can’t tell you how excited I was 4 years ago, while researching bottle-dash, to find a piece of red glass in the stucco of a house (see photo below) near where I used to live. Small victories!

bottledashCU

When I was younger, back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was still quite common to see it on Vancouver houses of a certain vintage. Sadly, this isn’t still the case. This unique stucco dash variant never acquired the ‘retro-cachet’ that something like the “Vancouver Special” did. And with the increase in demolitions of modest single-family homes, the examples (housing stock) of buildings featuring bottle-dash stucco is dwindling. Though not unique to Vancouver, the stuff is a unique and colourful illustration of a period of time in the city’s built history — a small visual gift fit for discovery by locals and visitors alike.

  • Bottle-dash exterior sparkling in the winter sun.
  • Two examples of bottle-dash stucco garages. Green glass and white quartz (L) and multi-colored glass with white quartz aggregate.
  • Bottle-dash garage with orca tag in Fairview.
  • Bottle-dash apartment building in Grandview-Woodlands.
  • Example of older wood home on East Hastings 'modernized' with bottle-dash stucco.
  • Bottle-dash house on East Hastings. An example of an older house 'updated' with bottle-dash stucco.
  • Bottle-dash stucco house on Keefer St.
  • Twin bottle-dash houses on Prior Street.
  • Bottle-dash stucco row houses on Victoria Drive.
  • Close-up detail of two bottle-dash stucco exteriors.
  • The elusive red-glass shard found in Fairview.
  • My favorite example of a bottle-dash stucco house in Grandview-Woodlands.

There are 47 comments

  1. I’ve always loved the sight of houses with this and it is a little mysterious, like beach treasures mixed with old Roman tile mosaics:)
    Raven Raven

  2. Christine thanks for another great article. Our house built in 1938 has this colourful stucco. When we did a renovation in 2000 and wanted to match the stucco we were unable to find dash that included the green, blue and red glass colours. We thought about trying to round up some old coloured bottles, smash them, and try and mix the glass bits into the closest matching dash available, but gave up on the idea. So unfortunately the back of our house does not match the rest.

  3. I grew up in one of these houses, east Van to be precise. Lancaster St. House is no longer there,alas, re-placed by a Vancouver special . Occasionally I would pick off my favourite colour,green, and consider my small handful a glittering treasure.

  4. We have the “old” stucco on our house in Calgary with the shards of glass embedded in it.
    My wife keeps talking about renos and I keep trying to put her off because a) it’s expensive.. and b) it likely means the end of our “vintage” stucco.
    By comparison, ‘today’s stucco’ looks extremely DRAB and boring!!
    !@#$%^%$#@!

  5. This brought me back to my childhood home, which had similar stucco dash. I too looked for the precious odd-coloured stones. Thanks for researching and writing this.

  6. So interesting! The same glass stucco finish were on many a Richmond home too. Thanks for the wonderful write up.

  7. I live in a Saanich (suburb of Victoria), in a 1930 house that not only has crushed glass in the stucco, but crushed shells as well. I love it!! However, it is really difficult to repair the cracks.

  8. What a neat topic for heritage hounds! The photos that accompany this article may not show the most attractive architecture, (more a case of re-muddling than renovation) but sadly with all the demolition that goes on here, few examples of this nifty stucco remain. Growing up I recall seeing many charming smaller homes all over Vancouver with with this exterior coating. They tended to have attractive architectural features such as rounded windows, and side extensions with arched gates leading to the back garden. They also often had carefully manicured topiary shrubs and hedges in the front yard. Their inviting curb-appeal combined with the stucco’s sparkle and flash in sunlight absolutely fascinated me as a kid!

  9. I can recal many scrapes on my arms as I ran down the narrow walkway on the side of our Vancouver special in N Burnaby. I can still hear Mom’s voice scolding me for picking off the beautiful blue glass. The house still stands, bottle-dash and all. Nice article!

  10. I’m glad so many enjoyed this article. I’m sorry that so many have the scars to prove it.

  11. I used to live about a block up from Sir Mathew Begbie Elementary back in the mid to late 70’s and our house had bottle-dash stucco! I remember all too well how it felt to fell against it. It’s probably a miracle that I don’t still carry the scars some 40 years later! I have no idea if the house still stands or not as I haven’t been able to visit my old neighbour in years because I moved out of the province. But I will never lose the memories of living in that house 🙂

  12. Our 1926-28 house in central Pennsylvania has bottle glass stucco; all colors on a very light grey surface. We bought it in 2013 from the 2nd owner who bought it in the 1960s. She said the stucco was already there when she bought it, and she assumed it was applied in the beginning.

  13. I remember my neighbour “aunty” Gertie yelling at the (usually smaller) kids in the neighbourhood: “Stop picking at it!” That was in Kits in the 70s. Her tiny house was bulldozed in the late 80s and is now a duplex, still stucco but no glass.

  14. Interesting fact from years of sampling houses for asbestos: bottle dash is more commonly asbestos containing than other types of stucco. Stucco was usually mixed on site before application; a company would have bags of cement, aggregate, and asbestos which they would mix before application. This meant that, as asbestos is water-proof, it would usually bundle up in pebble sized “dough-balls” and distribute itself throughout the stucco, all in all forming a finish that contains about 5% chrysotile asbestos.

  15. I think we should start installing this again as a way using recycled glass!

  16. This was an inexpensive material to cover your house with, it was also very energy efficient. At least the stucco doesnt burn l;ike vinyl siding which is toxic. I do remember as a kid getting scrapes on my arms when we played at my firends house which had this coating. I thought it was cool when the sun hit it. Whats amazing is glass as a coating is water resistant, it just slides off unlike wood which if not coated correctly absorbs water causing rot. I just wished that the background colour could have been different. I think if we came up with a new version where you could have the background colour black or white and then have the colourful glass sprinkled on would be a major new contrast, those houses that are still standing dont leak, this is an obvious brilliant way to cover your house. ide like to see it revamped

  17. I agree with you Greg and the others who suggested it, we should be using this again for all the reasons you list above and more!

  18. Grew up with Stucco houses in the 50’s and 60’s and love the old style.I pass by that apartment building in the picture all the time.Its near Brittania School

  19. My childhood home in Regina, Saskatchewan was covered in this dangerous broken glass stucco. The bedroom windows were narrow, set high in the wall. I used to worry that if there was a fire and we had to escape out the window, we would slide down the glass wall and shred ourselves! Luckily, we didn’t have to try it out.

  20. Lived in East Van for 12 years in a small bungalow with this kind of stucco. I did like all the colours, but the pinkish hue was not my favourite!

    Over time the little “gems” start to come off, or kids would pick them off thinking they’re jewels 🙂

  21. Wow, over a year later this article this resonates with people. Thanks for all the responses. I’m glad to know that I’m not alone in my obsession with bottle-dash!

  22. My wife and I bought this 1921 house in Louisville, Kentucky that has one surviving exterior wall with bottle dash. A neighbor told us that in the sixties the old stucco was removed and replaced with aluminum siding which is still covering exterior walls.
    The wall of bottle dash that survived was intact because it was on a porch and had been covered with a fiber board. It was a nice surprise to discover such a unique stucco when we uncovered it.
    We had never seen anything like it.

    Thanks to Christine H. for shedding some light on this mysterious and artistic form.

  23. A large section of our stucco came off and we found a stucco contractor who had worked on our house decades ago! We also found a supplier of colored glass bits – any color, any size, semi-tumbled so they weren’t as sharp – and we created a custom mix that is a perfect match. CloseTheLoop.com , highly recommended by me!

  24. In the late 1940s through the 60s, I spent many wonderful years with my grandparents in a very old farm house about 45 miles west of Chicago. It was probably built in the 1870-1900 era, before indoor plumbing, electricity, and phones. (That’s another story.) The walls were thick, maybe 8 to 10 inches. The exterior was light gray stucco, about the shade of dry concrete and the glass, partly tumbled. Most of the glass used was shades of pale greens, blues, and clear that sparkled like diamonds in my eyes. A few small, broken sea shells as well as rounded pebbles, and something black were mixed in with the glass. Yes, there were a few pinks and reds, but they were beyond the reach of my arms. Some of the glass was rounded but others were frightening sharp. Thankfully foundation plantings somewhat protected both me and the glass. I didn’t have much success picking diamonds from the wall, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

    The basement was more of a cellar, with narrow rickety steps, designed to house an ancient coal burning furnace that required regular stoking day and night. The hot air, sometimes tinged with the aroma of burning trash, rose without the aid of electricity. A small chain on a wheel ran from a kitchen doorjam to the furnace below. It was used to occasionally stoke the fire without going to that dark, windowless cellar lit with one lone light bulb hanging from ancient electrical wire. The cellar was dark, musty-dusty, and scary with a packed-dirt floor, and a cistern that collected rain water from the roof. The cistern sometimes housed a few frogs.

    Weekends artists would park along the highway and paint pictures of the house and weathered barn. Sadly, the wonderful old house was torn down in the 1970s to make way for condos.
    I longed for even another old snap shot of the setting. Then, in the early 2000 I found a watercolor on ebay that made my heart sing.

    Until finding your article I’d never knew this type stucco had a name. Thank you for a great article. Like others I too would like to see more use of recycled glass in home exteriors.

  25. Such an interesting story! I hadn’t actually realized these Vancouver houses were even “stucco” though as I’d always considered the house I grew up in back in Winnipeg to be “stucco”. Built in 1973 it was covered in an almost pure white version. No sparkles and no variation in colour or texture. I remember it being VERY rough to the touch and almost looked like the uneven surface of a cake covered in Royal Icing. I remember our neighbours across the way had actually used the same material and finish to the walls of the rec room in their basement!! I shudder to think of the poor kids playing down there and accidentally brushing up against the walls!

  26. This brought back lovely memories of time spent in my grandmothers old oak tree in richmond, with my bottle glass ‘treasures’ in hand, freshly picked from her stucco walls. The blue ones were the rarest and most coveted. I can still hear her yelling at me to “stop picking at her house!”. :)) I’d totally forgotten about this type of house finish! I, too, would love to see it make a comeback. Thanks for the memory.

  27. I live in a bottle dash house that we bought in 1993. The back half of the turn-of-the-century (1904) endlessly renovated house is now covered in hardy-board and looks more like the original house might have looked because of some bad renovations that happened back in the 1950s (newspapers stuffed in walls suggest) but the front half continues to glitter and sparkle in the sun. My kids, when they were small, would pick out the glass and collect it as jewels.

    I was told that most of that glass was from medicinal bottles, which makes colour matching difficult. When we considered that option for the back of the house, we learned of a homeowner who found an “old-world” European stucco guy who calculated the % weights of each colour of glass. The homeowner collected what they could, the stucco guy patched all of the areas that needed to be covered, and they won some heritage award for their efforts. For us that represented more efforts than we could afford, so our house has two very different looks!

    Long live the Sparkle Houses!

  28. I want to use this in my renovations…anyone offer dash-glass in Vancouver?
    Linda ?

  29. My dad built the house I grew up in in approx. 1955. Our house was a bottle stucco house…while and shiny black crushed stone on the upper floor and multi coloured glass on the lower. I spent hours as a kid picking the coloured glass out. The house is the last one standing in the old hood at Dominion and Boundary. Whoever lives there now has let it deteriorate into quite the dump. Our old wine cellar is doorless and likely full of rats. They always loved my dad’s wine and discarded flesh. But we had the biggest tomatoes(with a hint of wine) and ginormous earthworms…likely alcoholics! Lol.

  30. My auntie had a home in Langley with this stucco. My memory is putting my hand on the glass stucco, my brother leaning against my hand and me pulling it quickly away as the glass was sharp. This resulted in a large , deep cut in one of my fingers. I refused stitches and still have the scar to this day.

  31. Living in Vancouver in the 80s and 90s I remember this stucco well. I’ve lived in more than one building that had it. Not a pleasant thing to fall against, but mesmerizing to find the little treasures hidden within.

  32. Lived in one of these houses late 50s till mid 60s and have the scars to prove it.
    One of the pieces of green glass in our hour had unmistakable traces of a 7-up bottle! Recycling at it’s best. When the bottle could not be cleaned and re-used it became house siding!

  33. i met the sin of the contractor who was on e 6th , he said the glass came from the piles of old beer / pop bottles that were leftovers from the brewery that was close by

  34. My grandparents place on Osler had coloured glass embedded in the exterior stucco. We used to try to pry it off on occasion but rarely with success. It was pretty cool but, yeah, you wouldn’t want to slide along a wall while playing a game. Another thing I associate with my grandparents place was the smell of the boxwood hedge that ran up the sides of the house.

    My other grandparents house on 18th near Dunbar had a bit of glass in places but not as much.

  35. I loved the bottle glass stucco of a house my Dad rented in the area around Douglas Park. Yes, I picked off the blue where I could. We now own a house built in 1912, and I’m amazed to learn that the milk of magnesia bottles we sometimes dig up around our property are the source of my childhood blue treasures! Thank you for your research and a most enjoyable article.

  36. Edit to my previous comment, my excavated blue bottle is embossed “Bromo Seltzer Emerson Drug Co. Toronto Ont.” Apparently bromo seltzer was vastly popular and the bottles are now commonly available to collectors, so odds are good that many of them wound up as stucco treasures.

  37. this is my trade for 40 years…the colored glass is broken up then mixed with what ever color stone is being used…and all is applied at the same time…..NOT …pressed in with a trowel…..you should do proper research……brown beer bottles,green sprite or 7up bottles,blue vics vapor,or cobalt bottles,clear was cream soda or milk bottles

  38. I have a house with this type of stucco. It needs patching and cleaning. I doubt its ever had a cleaning and is far from its glitterly best. Soft wash with an exterior bleach spray? Anyone know how to clean it properly without knocking all the bits off?

  39. Does anyone know of a good tradesperson in Vancouver that repairs cracks in this exterior sparkle stucco finish. I still have a jar of broken glass from years ago in an outdoor shed.

  40. One of my earliest memories as a child is watching this being applied to our new house in Saskatoon in the mid-60s. I’ve always loved the look of this finish. I just moved into a house in East Van that was built in 1964 and has this original siding on it. Still in beautiful condition, which is amazing as the house has never been cleaned to my knowledge. I wonder if this is a potentially, sustainable if not low maintenance way to cover a house. Thanks for the article!

  41. Nice article on the history of this type of exterior! 🙂
    I grew up in a bottle dash house in Edmonton in the Bonnie Doon area in the early 70s. It’s still standing but run down. Despite the renovation/infill craze of the last 20 years, the city still has quite a number of bottle dash homes left. It may have been a sharp hazard, but for durability and fire protection few of our modern siding compares. Sad that this option is no longer available for those who’d like to revive this kind of exterior.

  42. My great grandparents, Otto and Fanny Harper, lived in a sparkle stucco house in West Virginia. It was light gray with colorful glass chips. They built it around 1920 and it’s still standing but the stucco has been replaced with siding. They had a natural spring in the dirt floor cellar which Granddaddy used as a wood shop. He owned a lumber mill there. They had running water and complete bathroom, one of the first in the area. No outhouse, thank goodness! Great memories!

  43. I think this kind of stucco treatment must be MUCH older than has been suggested here. I actually came upon this website while searching for information about bottle-dash stucco houses (although I did not know this phrase yet) that I had just read about in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (yes, that house), and in The Scarlet Letter (Governor Bellingham’s house). Now of course these are both works of fiction but I think it plausible that Hawthorne is describing Colonial-era houses that he had actually seen.

  44. The embedded crushed glass stucco homes are quite common among the 1950s homes in Edmonton.

    Last year we found glass shards with 7UP on them on a friend’s parents’ home in the Dovercourt neighborhood.

    My childhood home had a nice looking sparkle stucco (bottle dash) too.

    Our current 1970s home is fronted with aluminum siding and brick but otherwise wrapped with the white crushed rock stucco minus any glass. This is also very common 1970s construction.

  45. Hello! Thank you for writing this. My home is a bottle dash house and I have been trying to research my home for historical reasons and am unable to identify the original architect and owner. Also, trying to find replacement authentic bottle dash for pieces of stucco that have come off or where it’s been worn down is almost impossible! Still looking. . 🙂

  46. Also! My bottle dash home is in Olympia, WA. I love it! But would love to know how to clean to make it shine!

Vancouver’s History of Independent Grocery Stores, Vol. 10

Discover one of what used to be many Victoria Drive Grandview-Woodland neighbourhood grocery stores: A & B Grocery.

Groundbreaking Eleanor Collins, The City’s ‘First Lady Of Jazz’

Eleanor Collins, celebrated as "Vancouver's first lady of jazz" and recipient of the Order of Canada, passed away on March 3, 2024, at the age of 104. In tribute to her legacy and to extend our condolences to her family, we are republishing Christine Hagemoen's 2017 article that explores Collins' profound impact on Vancouver's music scene.

Vancouver’s History of Independent Grocery Stores, Vol. 9

In her latest instalment, Christine Hagemoen details the progression of Kong’s Grocery in Strathcona.

Kingsgate, the ‘Little Mall That Could’, Turns 50!

A brief history of one of the last remnants of Mount Pleasant’s working-class origins, still standing as an oasis of resistance to the neighbourhood's gentrification.