This Week in History, 1915: The Vancouver World goes bust building the Sun Tower
The 17 storey building was conceived during a giant boom, but opened when the economy went bust just before the First World War
By John Mackie
Last updated 2 hours ago
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Many Vancouver landmarks were initially financial flops.
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The Sylvia Hotel had to be sold a year after it opened in 1913.
The Dominion Building was sold after the Dominion Trust Company went bankrupt in 1915.
The Marine Building cost $2.3 million to build in 1929-30, but the company that built it went under during the Great Depression, and it was sold for $900,000 in 1933.
Here’s another one: The Sun Tower, the elegant building at the southeast corner of West Pender and Beatty streets.
It was initially known as the World Tower, because it was built by the Vancouver World newspaper. In its prime, the World was Vancouver’s most profitable newspaper, bragging that it was “the biggest newspaper on earth” in 1910.
It was bunk, but the World’s co-owner and editor Louis D. Taylor justified the hype by publishing an ad claiming the World meant the number of agate lines of advertising annually (agate is a typographical measure used by newspapers).
This kind of chutzpah served L.D. Taylor well — he was Vancouver’s longest-serving mayor, elected eight times between 1910 and 1934.
Much of the World’s success was probably due to Taylor’s wife, Alice, who was managing director of the paper. She was a Vancouver pioneer — her father Jonathan Miller was Vancouver’s first postmaster.
In 1910, Taylor decided to build the city’s tallest skyscraper, the World Tower. He spared no expense, hiring the noted architect W.T. Whiteway to design what was touted as the tallest structure in the British Empire.
Whiteway’s Beaux-Arts design soared 17-storeys high, with an eight-storey base and a nine-storey hexagonal tower with a “cupola” dome that makes it 86.5 metres (284 feet) off the ground.
A 1909 story said the paper purchased the land for the building for $80,000, and an Aug. 15, 1910 story said the building would cost $200,000 to build.
A separate company, The World Building Limited, sold $50 shares to raise “one half of the total cost of the land and the building.” A Feb. 14, 1910 ad said the paper had also ordered a new $40,000 printing press.
There was a marble floor in the entrance, hexagonal tiles in the offices, and operators for the elevators. One thousand two hundred tons of steel went into its frame, which was clad in terra cotta, granite and brick.
Sculptor Charles Marega designed nine nude female caryatids that add some sensuality to the terra cotta on the eighth floor. Two decades later, he did the lions on the Lions Gate Bridge.
Two floors were to be used for the World, the presses were to be in the basement, and the rest of the building was to be rented out as office and warehouse space.
The World Tower was conceived during a huge boom, when Vancouver’s population quadrupled in a decade and property values soared.
Unfortunately, the building opened in 1912 just as a recession hit. A big globe held up by a strongman that appears in early drawings of the building was never installed. The roof looked like oxidized copper, but was actually terra cotta tile painted green.
On March 20, 1913, the rival Daily Province newspaper reported that the World Building was the subject of a foreclosure lawsuit brought by Couglan and Sons.
According to the Province, Couglan and Sons were “structural steelworkers and holders of a mortgage for $110,000 against the building for work done and advances made to other contractors to secure the completion of the World Building.”
Taylor fought to keep control of the building and the World newspaper. But on May 7, 1915, a judge approved an order for the sale of the paper to John Nelson.
The World moved out of the tower, which wound up being the home of Bekins Storage. The paper was purchased by The Vancouver Sun in 1924 and folded into The Sun.
The Sun’s office at 125 West Pender was devastated by a fire on March 22, 1937. So the Sun bought the former World Tower and moved in there, renaming it the Sun Tower.
It would be the home of the Sun from 1937 to 1965, and was famed for a giant neon sign on the cupola. The building was recently restored, and a real copper roof finally installed.
