The Sun Tower: Newspapers, Mayors and Breasts

It's three or four in the morning and I'm standing, or wavering, or possibly leaning on a wall of some kind - anyway I'm upright (I am vertical! I am amazing!), outside a nightclub called Lotus, and I may be glassy-eyed, and I may be unsure of where I'm sleeping tonight, but I'll be damned if I'm not looking at ten bare breasts, erect nipples and everything. On the side of a building that is. Were our streets always this sexy?

Yes. Ever since 1912, at least. It was winter that year when the building we've come to know and love as the Sun Tower - replete with the nude busts of nine comely lasses (sorry, 'muses') - was unveiled, easily trebling the number of awkward midday hard-ons on Pender Street. (Alright. So maybe they're not that arousing. It looks like they might have even lifted weights in their spare time, or did a little amateur boxing. But still. Some people are into that.) At any rate you can be sure that when these buxom beauties bounced into our prudish little town it was risque, it was juicy, it was gossip-worthy and scandalous, what with the halcyon days of the 25 cent peep show having not quite arrived yet.

The World Building, as it was first called, appeared thanks to the slickest newspaperman this side of Chicago, L. D. Taylor (it took on its current title in 1937 when the Vancouver Sun moved in - they left in 1965). Call it his Hearstian panache, call it something relating to the fact that he was allegedly once married to two women at once, call it damn good business sense - L.D. knew what Vancouver needed (of course he knew - he was mayor seven times!), and what our city needed, L.D. so wisely decided, was a giant building with breasts. And so it was built, and it was tall and grand and green and amazing.

Juvenile prurience aside, the busts are really quite spectacular. The architect, W. T. Whiteway, contracted Charles Marega, a truly eminent guy who left an indelible mark on this city (think bridge-flanking British lions and bridge-flanking British seamen) to carve the beauties, and he did not disappoint, oh no. Admired up close the caryatids appear sensuous, erotic almost. There's an attention to detail here that you just won't find on any Concord Pacific project.

To best appreciate Marega's handiwork, make use of the monstrously ugly parking lot across the street. I suggest entering by bicycle - not only does it preclude any sort of interaction with the doleful security guard who's sure to be milling about by the entrance, but also you can do a pretty good clip on the way back down the ramp, and that, frankly, is a fun thing to do. Sadly, a few years back the proprietors of the thing put up a chain link fence and gate type deal, so it's not so easy to make it to the roof unless you've discovered a way to, well, walk through solid objects. The second highest level is just fine however. Ride on over to the east wall and imagine yourself as L.D., cigar in mouth, reflecting on your glorious newsprint empire.

The Sun Tower stands at 100 West Pender Street.