We’ve looked at this building at a distance several years ago, but here it is close up. It’s not the only Horne Block still 
standing; there’s another on Cambie, and there were two others shown in this 1889 etching published in a Portland magazine called West Shore. Another (The Yale Hotel today) is also still with us – only the White Swan was redeveloped after a fire damaged it in 1894, less than 10 years after it had been built.
There was apparently a slightly different initial design for the West Cordova block, with the illustration obviously drawn before the building had been completed.
The developer was James Welton Horne, born in Toronto in 1853, with a remarkable early life (that he seems to have embellished more than a little). He did extremely well for himself at an early age, developing the new city of Brandon in Manitoba as the railway arrived, and seemingly in close association with the Canadian Pacific Railway, to their mutual benefit. He repeated the relationship in the newly established Vancouver, erecting four buildings before the city was 3 years old. An 1891 biography described him as ‘the heaviest individual property owner in Vancouver’, although that’s also probably self-promotion rather than accurate. With $156,000 worth of buildings he was a major investor, but Isaac Robinson and David Oppenheimer both had more valuable holdings.
He managed for a time to be both a Member of the Provincial Parliament, and an active property developer, but after four years in Victoria he retired from his political role in 1894 on medical advice (aged 41). Before that he had been elected to City Council in 1888 and 1889.
Another illustration of the building showed a somewhat more accurate representation, with the turret and decorative cornice that have both been lost for many years.
The narrow flatiron building (seen here in 1986) has housed a variety of businesses since NS Hoffar designed the building in 1889, including a wholesale shoe dealer in the 1920s, a wholesale stationer in 1952, a towel and sheet distributor in 1972, various fashion businesses from the 1980s to the 2000s, and now the home to a Timber Train Coffee Roasters cafe.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 791-0896
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Changing Vancouver 