The year was 1890, and the souls of Parisian citizens were burning every time they raised their heads to the sky. There stood the tower proudly, inescapably omnipresent from every point in the city. Gustave Eiffel one year ago. The architect has won the highly sought-after competition to build an avant-garde iron and steel structure in the heart of Paris. And since then it has become a plague, a notorious violator of the city’s baroque essence.

Of course, in these harsh protests, intelligentsia In the city with the most remarkable culture in Europe, there was a lot of idealization of the past. By then Paris was no longer the Gothic city many wanted to imagine. The Commune and the subsequent military conflict, rational expansion and destruction of medieval walls changed its character and put it at the forefront of urban planning on the planet. The Eiffel Tower was only its most modern anointing.

Despite Paris’ momentary surprise, the rest of the world closely watched its new tower’s performance. Often with jealousy. In the first year after construction the building raised more than £260,000. The interest generated by the mere presence and magnificence of the Universal Exhibition contributed to this. positive balance economic. It’s not for nothing that the metal peak costs around 280,000 pounds. It was amortized in one year.

Meanwhile, at the top of the planet, in London, at the head of the largest known modern empire, a group of British MPs and businessmen were scratching their necks uneasily. How can Paris, the corrupt political center of such a corrupt nation, have the most magnificent and revolutionary building in the world? London deserved a similar project that could put it on par with the City of Light on a symbolic and cultural level.

The Great Tower of London, 1900 high. The project could not go further than here. (Commons)

And so the competition to build the Great Tower of London was born. Edward Watkin, Member of the House of Commons and famous railway magnate. Watkin had been instrumental in building the British capital’s Metropolitan Railway, which was later incorporated into the urban metro network, and his trunk contained countless extravagant ideas. A few years ago he tried to build an underwater tunnel that could connect France and the United Kingdom.

It’s too early, Edward.

Perhaps for this reason Watkin offered a reward of 500 guineas (a fortune at the time) to the architect or engineer who could come up with the most appropriate and daring design for grand London. The result is a collection: bright and crazy Projects that, if completed, will change the face of the city forever. These works, compiled here by Public Domain Review, offer a fantastical look into the futuristic imagination of 19th-century men and women.

By the way, one of the sketches won the competition. It was the Number 37 designed by Stewart, McLaren and Dunn. The tower stood 366 meters above London and was forged from pure English iron. Had it been completed, it would have surpassed not only the Eiffel Tower (more than sixty metres) but also the current London skyscraper, The Shard (which explains well the type of imperial power that motivated the tower).

It never came to fruition. The city council granted a small plot of land at Wembley Park, which at the time was still far from the central core of the city. Construction work began in 1892 and soon ran into problems. Consortium created clearlyMetropolitan Tower Company, rapid delays and non-payment as a result of both the project’s foreclosure and the numerous structural problems workers encountered (muddy terrain).

The building, then known as Watkin Tower, fell out of favor for the last time in 1904. Extremely similar to Eiffel’s masterpiece (who was consulted to complete the project and then resigned in a show of radical patriotism), the foundations lie bare for several years before being demolished by City officials. There are photos. Aspect interruption of sexual intercourseLondon found the limits of its greatness in Paris.

We have their designs, they are all amazing. dreams Empire and Victorian era to traced replicas of the Paris tower. This and Wembley Stadium: Both the original 1923 and the current stadium are located at the point where work on the tower began.

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*An earlier version of this article was published in May 2019.