Sun Tower’s Nine Maidens

The Sun Tower, originally built in 1911–1912 as the World Building at West Pender and Beatty in Vancouver’s Victory Square area, carries its most memorable detail just below the cornice: nine terracotta caryatids by local sculptor Charles Marega, long nicknamed the “Nine Maidens.”

Marega’s figures stirred plenty of commentary at the time for their semi-nude treatment, an early reminder that public ornament can be as provocative as any headline printed inside the building. The same sculptor later left other unmistakable marks on the city, including the lions at the south end of Lions Gate Bridge and the Captain George Vancouver statue at City Hall, which helps place these maidens within a wider Vancouver story of civic symbolism and street-level mythology.