50/50|Leckie Building, Gastown — seven storeys of brick playing public radio

Adam works at a public radio station, cutting a documentary about a volcano nobody else on staff finds interesting. The station is fictional. The building housing it is a hundred-and-eighteen-year-old shoe factory at the southeast corner of Water and Cambie in Gastown.

The Leckie Building went up in 1908 for John Leckie's boot and shoe company, with a substantial addition finished in 1913. It is a massive cubic seven-storey Edwardian warehouse in brick and granite, and behind the facade the structure is old-growth timber — posts thick enough that two people cannot reach around them. Buildings like this were how Vancouver stored and made things before the port moved on. It carries municipal heritage protection now and holds offices and studios, which is exactly the kind of tenancy the film asked it to play.

The corner is one of the most photographed in the city. The Gastown steam clock stands a block west and sounds its whistle every quarter hour, cobblestones and all. Most visitors walk past the Leckie without looking up.

Look up. The window bays are tall and evenly spaced, the brick is soot-darkened at the cornice, and the whole mass sits square on its corner without a single decorative flourish above the second floor. It is a building that was designed to hold weight, cast as the place where a young man goes to work while pretending he is not dying.

Location photo: Water Street, Gastown, Vancouver (Wikimedia Commons).