Housed in a fine collection of 19C buildings is a hodge-podge of 20C curio shops, art galleries, restaurants and stores. This is where the city's first timber mills began cutting wood from nearby forests in 1862; many of the brick and stone buildings in Gastown incorporate superstructures of old-growth Douglas fir timbers. Rundown and slated for "urban renewal" by the 1950s, the area was revived and renovated thanks to citizen activism in the early 1970s. The provincial government designated Gastown a historic district in 1971.