Pacific Biological Laboratories

The two-story wooden building on Cannery Row, with its weathered gray shingles and faded sign, held the frantic energy of Ed Ricketts. As a marine biologist in the nineteen thirties and forties, Ricketts used this space to collect and catalog tide pool specimens. He hosted legendary parties here, where writers like John Steinbeck drank beer and debated philosophy among the smell of formaldehyde and preserved sea creatures. The lab remains exactly as it was the day Ricketts died in nineteen forty-eight.