TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Friday, Mar 24, 2023

How London almost got its own Eiffel Tower

How London almost got its own Eiffel Tower

Somewhere beneath the pitch of England's national stadium in Wembley, London, lie the foundations of what could have been the city's tallest building. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Great Tower of London was poised to surpass it in height and reach almost 1,200 feet.

Instead, it never went past the first construction stage, which came to be known as the "London Stump." It was demolished almost 120 years ago, leaving behind an unfulfilled dream and large concrete foundations that were rediscovered in 2002, when the current stadium was built to replace an older one.

So what went wrong?

The tower was the brainchild of Edward Watkin, a British politician and railway tycoon whose previous endeavors included a failed attempt to build a tunnel under the English Channel, more than 100 years before the current Eurotunnel began construction.

'Bigger the better'
One of the tower designs that didn't get picked.


"Watkin was a born entrepreneur and he loved big ideas -- the bigger the better," says Christopher Costelloe, an expert on Victorian architecture and an inspector of historic buildings at public heritage organization Historic England. "I think he had a tendency to get so excited with his ideas that he often plowed ahead before thinking about how practical or financially viable they were."

The Eiffel Tower, which opened in 1889, quickly became a popular tourist attraction and its construction costs were recouped in a matter of months.

At the same time, Watkin was looking for ways to attract more passengers onto his Metropolitan Railway -- which would later become the Metropolitan line on the London Underground.

The railway passed through Wembley, then a rural hamlet northwest of central London, where Watkin had purchased land to create an amusement park: "It was meant to be the Disneyland of its day, or the successor to the early 19th-century leisure parks like Battersea Park in London or Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen," says Costelloe.


What better than a tower taller than the Eiffel to convince Londoners to board a train to get there?

Watkin had the audacity to ask Gustave Eiffel himself to design it, but the French engineer refused on patriotic grounds. His plan B was an international design competition, with a first prize of 500 guineas, about $80,000 in today's money.

He received 68 submissions, not all of them realistic.

One was 2,000 feet tall and was meant to have a train running halfway to the top, on a spiraling railway. Another was designed as an "aerial colony" with sky gardens, museums and galleries, as well as a reproduction of the Great Pyramid at the top.

Most, however, matched the aesthetics of the Eiffel, and it was one of these that Watkin selected as the winner, submitted by London architects Stewart, McLaren and Dunn.

"The winning proposal was a more slender version of the Eiffel Tower. Very similar in its overall profile, but the structure was sort of skinnier," says Costelloe.

At 1,200 feet, it was also about 175 feet taller than its Parisian counterpart, which was the world's tallest building at the time.

A not-so-popular attraction
The first, and only, completed stage of the tower.


All entries were collected in a catalog, published in 1890, which described the project in detail and revealed that the London tower would be "much more spacious" than the Eiffel and include "restaurants, theaters, shops, Turkish baths, promenades, winter gardens and a variety of other amusements," all reachable via a recent invention, the electric elevator. An observation deck would offer panoramic views and astronomical observations, facilitated by the "purity of air" found at such an "immense height."

After the initial fanfare, however, the proposed design was scaled down to make it cheaper to build, and the legs were reduced from the original eight to four, the same number as the Eiffel.

Construction began in 1892, and the first stage -- approximately 150 feet tall -- was finished three years later.

Wembley Park had opened the year before and was enjoying moderate success, but the tower still had a long way to go -- and there was something wrong with it.

"When they reached the first stage, it soon became clear that the building was subsiding. Not so badly that they couldn't use it, but they certainly realized they'd have big problems if they carried on building it higher, increasing the strain on the legs," says Costelloe.

Although it was opened to the public and elevators were installed, the tower was doomed.

"One of the main problems was that Watkin died in 1901," Costelloe adds. "He had been the driving force behind the project and with his death all that was left was a rational calculation of costs and benefits. People could go up to the first stage, but that wasn't quite high enough to get the sort of panoramic views you'd get from the top of the Eiffel Tower, and the surrounding area wasn't particularly developed or spectacular.

"There just weren't enough visitors to pay for finishing it."

Tallest in town
Once Watkin died, the impetus for building the tower was lost.


A year after Watkin's death, the tower was declared unsafe and closed down. Shortly after, it was demolished with dynamite. The surrounding Wembley area, however, continued to flourish as an industrial and residential London suburb.

In 1923, a stadium, which would later be known as the original Wembley Stadium, was erected on the former site of the tower. Its demolition to make way for the current Wembley Stadium eventually unearthed the tower's foundations, when work to lower the level of the new pitch was undertaken. It was a late reminder of the failed tower, also referenced by a pub in the area called "Watkin's Folly" (it closed permanently in 2019).

Remarkably, Watkin's Tower would still be London's tallest building today, surpassing The Shard skyscraper by almost 160 feet. But would it be an iconic landmark like the Eiffel Tower? Probably not, says Costelloe: "It would still have been a very big structure on the skyline, but seen only in certain views," he says.

"Not being in the center of London, it would never have had the sort of dominating focus that the Eiffel Tower has in Paris."

Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
Close
0:00
0:00
Powell: Silicon Valley Bank was an 'outlier'
Donald Trump arrested – Twitter goes wild with doctored pictures
NYPD is setting up barricades outside Manhattan Criminal Court ahead of Trump arrest.
Credit Suisse's Scandalous History Resulted in an Obvious Collapse - It's time for regulators who fail to do their job to be held accountable and serve as an example by being behind bars.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman tours potential migrant housing in Rwanda as asylum deal remains mired in legal challenges
Paris Rioting vs Macron anti democratic law
'Sexual Fantasy' Assignment At US School Outrages Parents
Credit Suisse to borrow $54 billion from Swiss central bank
Russian Hackers Preparing New Cyber Assault Against Ukraine
Jeremy Hunt insists his Budget will get young parents and over-50s back into work
If this was in Tehran, Moscow or Hong Kong
TRUMP: "Standing before you today, I am the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent World War III."
Mexican President Claims Mexico is Safer than the U.S.
A brief banking situation report
Lady bites police officer and gets instantly reaction
We are witnessing widespread bank fails and the president just gave a 5 min speech then walked off camera.
Donald Trump's asked by Tucker Carlson question on if the U.S. should support regime change in Russia?.
Silicon Valley Bank exec was Lehman Brothers CFO
In a potential last-ditch effort, HSBC is considering a rescue deal to save Silicon Valley Bank UK from insolvency
BBC Director General, Tim Davie, has apologized, but not resigned, yet, following the disruption of sports programmes over the weekend
Elon Musk Is Planning To Build A Town In Texas For His Employees
The Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse effect is spreading around the world, affecting startup companies across the globe
City officials in Berlin announced on Thursday that all swimmers at public pools will soon be allowed to swim topless
Fitness scam
Market Chaos as USDC Loses Peg to USD after $3.3 Billion Reserves Held by Silicon Valley Bank Closed.
Senator Tom Cotton: If the Mexican Government Won’t Stop Cartels from Killing Americans, Then U.S. Government Should
Banking regulators close SVB, the largest bank failure since the financial crisis
The unelected UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, an immigrant himself, defends new controversial crackdown on illegal migration
Man’s penis amputated by mistake after he’s wrongly diagnosed with a tumour
In a major snub to Downing Street's Silicon Valley dreams, UK chip giant Arm has dealt a serious blow to the government's economic strategy by opting for a US listing
It's the question on everyone's lips: could a four-day workweek be the future of employment?
Is Gold the Ultimate Safe Haven Asset in Times of Uncertainty?
Spain officials quit over trains that were too wide for tunnels...
Don Lemon, a CNN anchor, has provided a list of five areas that he believes the black community needs to address.
Hello. Here is our news digest from London.
Corruption and Influence Buying Uncovered in International Mainstream Media: Investigation Reveals Growing Disinformation Mercenaries
Givenchy Store in New York Robbed of $50,000 in Merchandise
European MP Clare Daly condemns US attack on Nord Stream
Former U.S. President Carter will spend his remaining time at home and receive hospice care instead of medication
Tucker Carlson called Trump a 'demonic force'
US Joins 15 NATO Nations in Largest Space Data Collection Initiative in History
White House: No ETs over the United States
U.S. Jet Shoots Down Flying Object Over Canada
Being a Tiktoker might be expensive…
SpaceX, the private space exploration company, made a significant breakthrough in their mission to reach space.
China's top tech firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, NetEase, and JD.com, are developing their own versions of Open AI's AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT
This shocking picture, showing how terrible is the results of the earthquake in Turkey
President Joe Biden delivered the 2023 State of the Union Address , in order to help Americans that missed the 2022 speech, do not have internet, and suffer from short memory.
The desk of King Carlos Alberto of Sardinia has many secret compartments
Today's news from Britain - 9th February 2023
×