What we think about when we think about the Post Office Tower
What do you think about when you think about the Post Office Tower? Is it the names – the Post Office Tower, the Telecom Tower or the BT Tower depending o your generation? Is it Smashing Time, the 1967 satire of Swinging London, where the revolving restaurant goes out of control? Or the 1966 Doctor Who story The War Machines, where a computer based in the building attempts to take over the world? Is it Noel Edmonds on a Christmas morning doling out surprises to families with a heartrending story attached? Or Kitten Kong, the 1971 episode of The Goodies where the tower is brought down by a giant marauding kitten? Is it high-tech illustrations in Ladybird books, or postcards and brochures from the time? Perhaps you watched it being built, or pass it every day on your commute? Maybe you went there as a child, or were lucky enough to eat in the revolving restaurant, visiting before a bomb in 1971 closed it off to the public at large?
It’s hard to overestimate the impact the Post Office Tower made in the mid 1960s when it opened to the public. Nothing quite represented Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’ like it. London had not seen this number of souvenir brochures, postcards, stamps, models and novelties dedicated to a new building since the Festival of Britain 15 years before. Until satellite transmissions began to make the tower’s microwave technology redundant in the late 1980s it was a symbol of the modern infrastructure that Britain had embraced so rapidly in the post-war years. Tall only so it could beam signals in a straight line over any intervening hills and to account for the curvature of the earth over distance, there’s a curiously primitive beacon-like purpose to the tower that belies its thickened tinted glass and steel modernity. Perhaps the modern world wasn’t so divorced from the old ways as we thought.
Visiting the tower back when I was researching it for Concretopia over a decade ago I was struck by how bland the communal areas were then – the lobby, the old bar and restaurant spaces at the top – when compared to the floors in the stem of the tower itself. Floor 14 was full of the original 60s technology – big moulded desks with buttons that lit up and meters that flickered when I turned them on, desks that were disappearing beneath ugly racks of cabling from the 90s. Like the underused public spaces, these once busy floors were now redundant. I walked round wondering what BT were doing with this building in the centre of London, and what might become of it.
So this luxury hotel idea is interesting, because it addresses the issue. The floors themselves are pretty small, and once you take the lifts and stairs out, there’s not room to do very much at all. You couldn’t get many hotel rooms on the tower as a result, so I expect the idea would be to convert the telephone exchange building below into hotel rooms too, with access to a sky room bar at the top of the tower so even if you weren’t staying in that part you could still get the benefit of it. The sad thing is, of course, that when it was originally opened the stories that came from it – all those kids picking up brochures, postcards and tat on family visits – could never happen now. They were ordinary families from all over, drawn to the excitement of the place, and its amazing views. Now those views will be the preserve of the rich folk who can afford to stay here. Probably no-one you or I will ever know. No-one who would find such a vantage point anything other than to be expected.
It’s dispiriting too to see the designer yoked to this project is Thomas Heatherwick, who has spoken out against the kind of modernist architecture the tower represents. Because of his lack of respect for twentieth century architecture, and his weaponising of those opinions in his recent book and radio series, he would seem to be the least appropriate designer for the task. Let’s see if the promise of cash changes his stance. Otherwise it’s likely to go the full Anne Geddes.
For the moment all of this is speculation. Deals have not been done, sales have not gone through, and the tower stands quiet and barely used as it has for decades. Where once I worried about what would happen to the tower, now I worry what will happen to the antique technology that sits there. I hope someone sees the value in all of that, not the monetary value for once, but the cultural, geeky value of it. There is such beauty to the tower, and only some of that is due to its form. Let’s hope whatever happens honours all those memories.
You can read more about my exploration of the BT Tower in Concretopia. I was accompanied by Richard de Pesando who recorded the visit on film. A new edition of his book, Floor 14, recording all of that glorious and moribund sixties tech, will be available later this year.
My next book, Tales of the Suburbs, tells stories from LGBTQ people about their experience of suburbia in Britain. I’ve been privileged to talk to so many interesting people about their lives for the book, I am excited about being able to share it with you when it comes out next year. In the meantime I am still looking to interview more queer women and people of colour. If you’d like to contribute you can contact me here, or if you know someone who fits the bill please do pass on my contact details. Thank you!
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