The Metropolis

The BT Tower tour

Darren Atwater | Friday 17 September, 2010 15:58

• A little bit of Stansted departure lounge in the sky*

Snipe was invited to visit the top of the BT Tower Wednesday to witness the launch of Open House London 2010, the annual event in which hundreds of buildings, tunnels, and gardens normally closed to the public are opened for gawking. While the BT Tower was built with a rotating restaurant, after a bombing by the Provisional IRA in 1971 the public areas were closed except for special event hire.

I was placed on the invite list because of Ian Visits. Ian has faithfully publicised interesting lectures, talks, walks, and hidden London history through his site and newsletter. It’s a London original and you should subscribe. Last week, I read a tweet from Ian where he reported that his request to attend the press conference and document the tower had been turned down. I immediately shot off an email to Open House London and was accepted. What’s the difference? Snipe publishes a print magazine. It doesn’t matter that Ian reaches tens of thousands of Londoners every week through his newsletter and Snipe is largely read by alcoholics in Dalston. This is how journalism works.

My friend Ryan Bigge teaches magazine writing at the University of Toronto [There is still space for 2010/11] He teaches a technique of story tension in feature writing to compel the reader to keep turning the page. I have never taken Bigge’s course, so I’ll give it all away now: the view is fantastic but the building is as worthy as the Stansted departure lounge. My story tension is even worse, I gave it away in the headline.

As I came for the building, I had no interest in the views. The following photos were taken with my iPhone 4, which gives much better photo than my Canon. But it’s only good for close ups – mobile lenses were not made for photographing the city.

Let’s begin.

The welcome you find today at 45 Cleveland Street

Just like Stansted, vistors go through X-Ray.

Relax, you have passed the X-ray.

Lift doors

Detail of the interior of the lift

Lift speedometre. Notice that it is four-digits – it could only get to that speed going down. Unintentionally.

Top speed going up.

Welcome to the 34th floor. Any vestige of the 1960s restaurant is long gone. Today, the floor has been ham-fistedly designed to resemble every soulless room that you have ever been in. Beige walls. Beige carpets. Bulk order leather and chrome sofa. Because of the height, I can safely say it resembles purgatory.

Here’s a video of me walking the circumference. I held the iPhone in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, figuring that if I could keep the wine level, the entire system would work like a steadycam. Note that it does not work like a steadycam.

Umm. It’s hosted somewhere else because of bandwidth costs – and now it’s upside down! People have been notified.

Spectacular closet.

A look to the left.

A look to the right.

A rep from Open House said that the old revolving restaurant mechanism was working and that we were rotating very slowly. I had my doubts and placed these pennies on the floor at 7pm.

Stairway to the bog. The most interesting architectural detail of the entire interior is the handrail cut into the wall.

WCs are on the 35th floor. This is as high as you can get in the tower. There are no windows.

The cubicles are all lined in a row, mixing male and female. Its now a cliche in modern restaurants, but if they did this in the 60s, it must have been scandalous.

For completeness. Note the mains for shaving and a sign that says that the hot water is far too hot for you to wash your hands with.

Okay, let’s look outside.

Did I say scandalous? This is horrifying. The site of the Middlesex Hospital, which was torn down by the Candy Brothers—excluding the listed chapel—in order to build flats. Then the recession came and they pulled out all the equipment. Worse, they intended to call the development NoHo, when the area already has a perfectly good name: that area next to Tottenham Court Road, north of Goodge street.

Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association, please send your hate mail to [email protected]

Click here for a look at the old Middlesex Hospital

Fitzrovia.

God’s light shining on the Queen, Prince Charles, and one corgi

Mere inches.

Okay, it’s 7:30pm now, what about those pennies?

Aha. No movement.

The City

The Eye

At this point there was a sound and a smell that was almost exactly like the sound and smell of an engine seizing on a 1976 Honda Civic when you are 16 and you thought you could save money by not putting oil in your car. There was a horrible lurch—and we began moving. Fast.

It kind of reminded me of this ad.

(Created by Rethink)

Then we shuddered to a stop. And then began moving again, slowly.

And then it was over. 34th Floor lift lobby.

Quality time across the street.

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