Well, of course, there’s that one… built by William the Conqueror and his successors, and renowned for its colorful Beefeaters, dark tales and Crown Jewels.
But London doesn’t stop there, especially in recent years when a horde of ‘starchitects’ appear to have been turned loose with their imaginations—although some of the most interesting towers aren’t especially new.
The Oxo Tower, for instance, is a 1920s Art Deco redesign of a former power house by the company that made Oxo beef bouillon cubes. With advertising signs banned along the river, the company opted for the ‘artwork’ you see above. Today, the building is a mix of residences, trade and restaurants.
Another notable riverside tower, the Elizabeth Tower rises over the Houses of Parliament and provides a home for Big Ben, which is neither the tower nor the clock, but the largest of the tower’s five bells—an often-cited but universally-ignored fact. Below it, a tower whose name comes from another tower: it’s the tower of Tower Bridge, named for the nearby Tower of London.
The banks of the river and nearby seem to be among the most popular places to drop a tower or two. Above, The Shard, London’s tallest building; in the foreground the curved shape of London’s City Hall, designed by Norman Foster, one of the best-known ‘starchitects’ these days. Below that, the brick smokestack of the Tate Modern museum, formerly a power station and just behind it a building nicknamed The Boomerang.
Speaking of nicknames, here’s Rafael Vinoly’s building on Fenchurch Street; it’s not hard to see why it’s nicknamed The Walkie-Talkie. The Arena Tower, just below it, has, by comparison at least, a more conventional shape. That can’t be said of Norman Foster’s The Gherkin, one of the earliest and most-famous of London’s unconventional skyscrapers.
But, to finish, I’d like to step back a bit from the modern, and feature two more towers, both the work of ‘starchitects’ of their own day. First, the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, near Trafalgar Square; it’s the work of James Gibbs, a protege of Christopher Wren.
And last, but far from least, the tower at St Pancras, the work of George Gilbert Scott, perhaps the greatest master of Victorian Gothic. St Pancras and its hotel are my absolutely favorite pile of red brick.
Boomerang (1 Blackfriar) and Tate modern, st martin in the fields
