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Watkin's Folly: In 1890s London, British politician and railway magnate Edward Watkin had a vision to build a gigantic structure that would dwarf the Eiffel Tower.
It would be erected 365 meters above the Wembley suburb of north-west London.
(Credit: Alamy)
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Railroad to Heaven: Watkins launched a competition to design the tower, offering a prize equal to $80,000 in today's money.
One of the proposals consisted of a train that climbed a spiral railway on the outside of a tower 609 meters high.
(Credit: The Public Domain Review)
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Pyramid Power: Another unrealistic proposal had a 1:12 scale replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza on its top.
(Credit: The Public Domain Review)
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The winning project: Designed by London architects Stewart, McLaren and Dunn, the winning proposal had a structure similar to that of the Eiffel Tower, although more slender.
(Credit: The Public Domain Review)
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First stage: Construction began in 1892, and the first stage, approximately 45 meters high, was completed three years later.
(Credit: London Stereoscopic Company/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Open to the public: Once finished and equipped with elevators, the first stage was opened to the public, but something was wrong.
(Credit: Alamy)
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Sinking feeling: It turned out that the tower was starting to sink and any attempt to build it higher, increasing its weight, could have been disastrous.
(Credit: Alamy)
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Once Watkin died, he lost the drive to build the tower.
(CNN) --
Somewhere under the lawn of England's national stadium in Wembley, London, are the foundations of what could have been the tallest building in the city.
Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Great Tower of London was prepared to surpass it in height and reach almost 360 meters.
Instead, it never got past the first phase of construction, 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.
What went wrong?
The tower was the brainchild of Edward Watkin, a British politician and railway tycoon whose previous projects included a failed attempt to build a tunnel under the English Channel, more than 100 years before construction began on the current Channel Tunnel.
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The bigger the better
One of the tower designs that was not chosen.
Credit: The Public Domain Review
"Watkin was a born entrepreneur and loved big ideas - the bigger the better," says Christopher Costelloe, an expert on Victorian architecture and an inspector of historic buildings at the public heritage organization Historic England.
"I think he had a tendency to get so excited about his ideas that he would often launch into them before thinking about the practical or economic feasibility of it."
The Eiffel Tower, opened in 1889, quickly became a popular tourist attraction and its construction costs were recouped in a matter of months.
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At the same time, Watkin was looking for ways to attract more passengers to his Metropolitan Railway, which would later become the London Underground Metropolitan Line.
The railway passed through Wembley, then a rural village northwest of central London, where Watkin had bought land to create an amusement park: "It was intended to be the Disneyland of its day, or the successor to the amusement parks of the early 20th century." XIX, 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 jump on a train to get there?
Watkin had the audacity to ask Gustave Eiffel himself to design it, but the French engineer refused for patriotic reasons.
His plan B was an international design competition, with a first prize of 500 guineas, about US$80,000 today.
It received 68 proposals, not all of them realistic.
One of them was 609 meters high and intended for a train to circulate halfway to the top, in a spiral 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, fit the aesthetic of the Eiffel Tower, and it was one of them that Watkin selected as the winner, submitted by London architects Stewart, McLaren and Dunn.
"The winning entry was a slimmer version of the Eiffel Tower. Very similar in overall profile, but the structure was slimmer," says Costelloe.
At 365 metres, it was also about 50 meters taller than its Parisian counterpart, which was the tallest building in the world at the time.
A not so popular attraction
The first, and only, completed stage of the tower.
Credit: Alamy
All the proposals for the tower were collected in a catalogue, published in 1890, which described the project in detail and revealed that the London tower would be "much more spacious" than the Eiffel and would include "restaurants, theaters, shops, Turkish baths, promenades , winter gardens and a variety of other amusements", which could be accessed by a recent invention, the electric elevator.
An observation deck would offer panoramic views and astronomical observations, facilitated by the "purity of the air" found at such an "immense height".
However, after initial fanfare, the proposed design was scaled back 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, some 45 meters high, was completed three years later.
Wembley Park had opened the year before and had been moderately successful, but the tower still had a long way to go…and something was wrong.
"When they got to the first phase, it soon became clear that the building was sinking. Not so much that they couldn't use it, but they did realize that they would be in big trouble if they kept building higher, putting more stress 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," adds Costelloe.
"He had been the driving force behind the project and with his death the only thing left was the rational calculation of costs and benefits. People could go up to the first stage, but it was not high enough to get the kind of panoramic views that were they get from the top of the Eiffel Tower, and the surrounding area wasn't especially developed or spectacular.
"There just weren't enough visitors to pay to finish it."
The tallest building in the city
Once Watkin died, the drive to build the tower was lost.
Credit: Herbert Barraud/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A year after Watkin's death, the tower was declared unsafe and closed.
Shortly after, it was demolished with dynamite.
However, the area around Wembley continued to flourish as an industrial and residential suburb of London.
In 1923, a stadium was built on the former site of the tower, later to be known as the original Wembley Stadium.
Its demolition to make way for the current Wembley Stadium ended up unearthing the foundations of the tower, when work began to lower the level of the new field.
It was a belated reminder of the failed tower, also referenced by a local pub called "Watkin's Folly" that closed for good in 2019.
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Surprisingly, the Watkin Tower would still be the tallest building in London today, towering over The Shard skyscraper by almost 50 metres.
But would it be an iconic landmark like the Eiffel Tower?
Probably not, says Costelloe: "It would still be a very large structure on the horizon, but it would only be visible from a few points," he says.
"Not being in central London, it would never have gotten the kind of overbearing attention that the Eiffel Tower does in Paris."
London Eiffel Tower