Marine Building

This guide to the Marine Building in Vancouver centers on Lieutenant Commander J. W. Hobbs, a former rum-runner turned developer who set out to give the city a skyscraper worthy of an ocean port. You'll hear how he hired an untested architecture firm in 1929, pushed ahead through the stock market crash, and watched costs climb past two million dollars while breadlines formed outside his windows. Look for the bronze doors and elevator panels along the way, carved with crabs, seahorses and ships crossing the ocean that would undo him.