That Time London Tried to Build Its Own Eiffel Tower…
…and How it Didn’t Quite Go To Plan.
We should probably start this one with the actual Eiffel Tower, which as far as Eiffel Towers go is still the original and the best. That sounds like a joke, but there’s actually quite a lot of Eiffel tower replicas dotted around the world.
This one below for instance, is in Slobozia, Romania…
While this one is in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
There actually doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the locations or reasons for these replicas, and a world tour visiting them all would certainly be an adventure.
But for now, back to Paris, France (Not Paris, Tennessee — which obviously also has a tower). Here’s the original plan for the first Eiffel Tower though:
This was one of the first drawings of the tower by Maurice Koechlin, who along with fellow designer Émile Nouguier worked in Gustave Eiffel’s office and had come up with the concept of…
“a great pylon, consisting of four lattice girders standing apart at the base and coming together at the top, joined together by metal trusses at regular intervals”.
Initially Eiffel wasn’t particularly interested in the design and so the two designers took it to colleague Stephen Sauvestre who was head of the company’s Architectural Department. He added in the large arches between the feet and a few other flourishes which were apparently enough to interest Eiffel who would eventually buy rights to the patent on the design which Koechlin, Nougier, and Sauvestre had taken out, and from that point on it was all Gustave Eiffel’s Tower.
It should be noted that this tower was never intended to be a permanent structure and was originally built to serve as the centre attraction for the 1889 World Fair, and was to be disassembled after 20 years, making it both one of the tallest and most expensive ‘pop-ups’ ever conceived.
Gustave Eiffel also famously built himself an apartment at the very top of the tower, which sounds great, but turns out it was actually pretty cosy in there. It’s now currently home to some creepy wax figures of Edison, Eiffel and his daughter Claire hanging out.
There’s a good chance that it was in this office where Gustave, now loved by Paris for his work on the tower, read a letter sent to him by an English railway entrepreneur named Sir Edward Watkins.
Watkins had just purchased a large amount of land out in Wembley, and was planning on building an amusement park.
Greatly impressed with the Eiffel Tower, and seeking to build a similar structure to attract people to the park (and for them to use the train to the park which he also owned) he asked Eiffel if he’d be interested in designing what would become “The Great Tower for London”.
Eiffel declined, stating that his countrymen “would not think me so good a Frenchman as I hope I am”
So, Watkins then decided to open up a competition for his new tower. Which is where things get really fun.
All up, 68 designs were deemed suitable for publication, which you can view here in all their glory.
Here’s a few of my favourites….
Design Number 6, was designed to be almost twice as high as the Eiffel tower, and included a train that would travel halfway up the tower along a spiralling track winding around the building.
Design number 18, which kind of looked like the original Eiffel tower with some additions, would include a ‘captive parachute’ that could hold four people at once (I’m not entirely sure how that was supposed to work, but sounds like fun)
Personally, I quite like Design number 22, which again was going to have an electric train winding its way to the top and included a number of shops and stuff inside it, while also having quite a nice shape, not dissimilar to The Shard in many ways. Lovely.
Or design number 28, simply entitled ‘time is money’
Or how about design Number 29, to be made entirely of granite, be more than TWICE the height of the Eiffel Tower, and at the monumental (and oddly specific) cost of £1,104,325 (which is about £135.8M in today’s money)
Many of the designs (unsurprisingly) looked very similar to the Eiffel Tower, and the eventual winner, Design Number 37, was no exception, although it included 8 legs instead of four, but crucially would eventually be 50 meters taller than the Paris equivalent.
Things didn’t go well from the start. After an unsuccessful bid to secure public funds for the tower, the design was scaled back to four legs, and by the time Watkin’s Park opened in May 1894, the tower was still only in the early stages of construction.
Finally, by September 1895 the first segment of the tower was completed. Unfortunately the reduction of the number of legs had increased pressure on the remaining legs and the tower was now subsiding. Meanwhile, Watkins himself was struggling and had retired due to ill health.
People still did come to the park, and visitors were able to walk around the paltry 47m high platform, which was now known as ‘Watkin’s Folly’ or alternatively, ‘The London Stump’ — a far cry from what Watkins had envisaged…
Things only got worse from there. The company set up to build the tower went into voluntary liquidation in 1899, while Watkins died in 1901. His tower never got any higher and was demolished a few years later having been deemed too unsafe.
And so the tower never eventuated. It’s interesting to think that for a while there, it could have been another structure joining Tower Bridge, the Gherkin and The London Eye as one of London’s easily identifiable silhouettes.
One last thing: Another attendee at the 1889 World Fair was one Sir John Bickerstaffe who was also impressed with the Eiffel tower, so much so he had a similar equivalent built on Blackpool’s seafront of which he was the Mayor at the time. Not nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower, but impressive none-the-less, and one you can still visit today.
