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Downtown Eastside, Vancouver — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The Downtown Eastside is one of Vancouver's oldest neighbourhoods, on the ground just east of the central business district where the city first took root. It runs along the East Hastings Street corridor and takes in the Gastown, Chinatown, and Japantown quarters. Strathcona lies on its eastern edge. Here stood Hastings Mill, the sawmill that seeded the settlement, and the district is still counted among Canada's poorest urban areas.
About Downtown Eastside
Where to stay in Downtown Eastside
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Most visitor beds in the Downtown Eastside cluster at its western edge, in Gastown, where heritage warehouses hold restaurants and bars along Water Street. Chinatown adds a few rooms near the Chinese Canadian Museum. The central East Hastings Street stretch has few tourist rooms and visible street hardship.
Choose your block with care. Gastown suits heritage streets and dining, while the downtown core just west offers a broader choice of hotels.
About Downtown Eastside
What are the main landmarks in Downtown Eastside?
Three museums cluster in Chinatown. The Chinese Canadian Museum fills the old Wing Sang building, joined by the Chinatown Storytelling Centre and the Chinese Canadian Military Museum Society. On East Cordova Street, the Vancouver Police Museum keeps the city's former coroner's court and morgue, with Saint James Anglican Church rising nearby in poured concrete.
Hastings Mill, the long-gone sawmill at the water's edge, marks where Vancouver began. At the Gastown boundary, the Vancouver Lookout tops Harbour Centre.
What is the history of Downtown Eastside?
The district is where Vancouver started. In 1867 a sawmill opened on the inlet at Hastings Mill, and the settlement of Granville grew up around the saloon of John Deighton, remembered as Gassy Jack. That shanty town, called Gastown, became the core of the new city when the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived and Vancouver was incorporated in 1886.
A fire levelled the young town that same year, and it rebuilt in brick along Water Street and Cordova Street. Chinatown took shape through the 1880s, while the Powell Street area formed a Japanese-Canadian quarter until wartime internment emptied it in 1942.
Where is Downtown Eastside?
The district fans out from the crossing of Main Street and East Hastings Street, its central axis. Burrard Inlet forms the northern waterfront, the downtown core presses in from the west, and Strathcona sits to the east. Gastown holds the western end around Water Street and Carrall Street, while Chinatown centres on Pender Street and the old Japantown lines Powell Street.
Clark Drive marks its far eastern edge.
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Updated July 2026