Taller Than Eiffel's Tower: the London and Chicago Tower Projects, 1889

Taller Than Eiffel's Tower: The London and Chicago Tower Projects, 1889-1894 Author(s): Robert Jay Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 145-156 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/990183 . Accessed: 02/02/2012 10:22 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org Taller than Eiffel's Tower: The London and Chicago Tower Projects, 1889-1894 ROBERT J A Y University of Hawaii During the later 19th century the rapid spread of iron and steel buildingtechnology created an engineers'architecture in which technical problemsfrequently took priority over traditionalconcerns of E::::~ architecturalstyle. Perhapsno otherstructure represents a moredra- 1~ ;~~ matic statement this new in architecturethan the a,; of spirit Eiffel ~~I; "? Tower. Yet while the controversysurrounding the buildingof the Tower is well known, the almost immediateattempts on the ~:-????--a Eiffel ~iiQ ~ part of Americanand British engineersand architectsto builda taller :si:2~ ~8;? towerare not. This articleconcentrates particularly on two ambitious " -'1.. but ultimatelyunsuccessful attempts to outdistancethe Eiffel Tower: ~"~;?~ Sir Edward Watkin's WembleyPark Tower in London and a ~ ~i-~??~C?i::;L.~ ?~' monumentaltower for the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in p-??~, 1893. These were well documentedin number architec- efforts any of ?~ ~"Ou~a sd tural and engineeringjournals of the period. They were also fre- -:I---~-I: and debatedin and quentlyreported popularmagazines newspapers, ~~n~lxi reflectingthe stronggeneral interest and nationalpride involvedin the 4~X~_I ps~ "'~ prospectof claimingthe talleststructure in the world. This articleis i-~x? based on such not because the liveli- ~v-~-u primarily periodsources, only of ?4X:l ;;" ~Ru: ness the but in some the s: of reportage, because, cases,they provide only x ~?i~ accessibleinformation on some of the proposedtower projects. The most strikingfact about the ultimatelyfutile effortsof British and American buildersto constructa taller tower is that, while they 1*r JI certainlyhad the technicalexpertise to do so, economicconsiderations Doubts as to the anothertall toweras overcamethem. profitabilityof Fig. 1. RichardTrevithick,, Project for the Monumentto the Re- a public attractionon eithera temporaryor permanentbasis doomed formAct, 1832. both the London and Chicago towerprojects to failure. Following the LondonExhibition of 1851, one architectsug- gested using the glass and iron from the Crystal Palace to constructa tower 1,000 feet high.2The first seriousproposal THE IDEA OF BUILDINGmonumental towers to commemo- for a monumentaltower at an internationalexposition came in rate important cultural or political events persisted throughout the 1870s, when the civil engineeringteam of Clark and most of the 19th century. The first major attempt of this sort Reeves, proprietorsof a bridge works in Phoenixville,Penn- was that of the British engineer Richard Trevithick, who pro- sylvania,concocted a planfor a tower to be erectedadjacent to a 1,000-foot columnar tower of cast iron to com- posed gilded the CentennialExposition in Philadelphiain 1876 (Fig. 2). memorate the of the Reform Act in 1832 passage (Fig. 1). This "CentennialTower" was also intendedto be 1,000 feet Trevithick died in 1833, and although the project was briefly high, constructedof iron, and, like Trevithick'searlier pro- revived in 1862 as a possible monument to Prince Albert, it met with little enthusiasm.1 It was especially on the occasion of Eiffel's of international that architects and 1. F. L.Jenkins,"Harbingers Tower,"JSAH, 16 (1957), expositions 19th-century 22-23. came forward with engineers monumental tower proposals. 2. Jenkins, "Harbingers,"25. JSAH XL VI:145-156. JUNE 1987 145 146 JSAH, XLVI:2, JUNE 1987 The first successful execution of a 1,000-foot tower at an international exposition was of course the Eiffel Tower of 1889. The petition of protest by artists and various others A I . l Fa ICTWALI M All]. MI• l INC. I X against Gustave Eiffel's tower is well known. Yet what is II+ .[..[.L. " +IN' + I",),Uo.A"t., ++U, most striking about the many criticisms aimed at the Eiffel Tower is that the most abusive of them came from foreign rather than French sources. More than anywhere else, Eiffel's accomplishment aroused the national jealousies of the British, who spoke ill of the tower almost from the time that it was first conceived. Not unexpectedly, some of the sharpest re- A buke of the Eiffel Tower came from William Morris, who saw it while attending a socialist congress in Paris in the summer of 1889. Responding to a rumor late in 1889 that one or more such towers might be built in London, Morris indignantly dismissed the Eiffel Tower as "a hellish piece of ugliness," and, as a concession at the exposition, "a piece of brigandage on the public."4 By the time the Exposition of 1889 closed, however, there was one point which none could dispute: the Eiffel Tower had been an enormous financial success. Even •x•v+m o• K,..,cmmmmtwsom m-+ though the cost of tickets was relatively expensive, the trip up the elevators of the tower had been so popular that there was often a wait of several hours at the ticket booths. Constructed with a government subsidy of one-and-a-half million francs, the Eiffel Tower easily paid for itself in admission revenues even before the Exposition closed; Eiffel himself would enjoy a concession on the tower profits over the next 20 years at the ridiculous fee of 100 francs a year paid to the city of Paris. It is little wonder that by November of 1889 the shares of the Eiffel Fig. 2. Clark, Reeves and Company, Project for the Centennial Tower stood at twice their value. Tower, 1874 (ScientificAmerican, January 1874). Company fully original Likewise, it is scarcely surprising that planners of expositions posal, was to be columnar in shape. The core of the tower elsewhere would begin to consider taller or more novel towers would have contained a tube 30 feet in diameter housing its which would presumably provide the same lucrative center- four elevators. Although the technical difficulties of building piece that the Eiffel Tower had been at the Paris Exposition. such a monument in the space of two years were clearly un- As early as 1886, the Belgian architects F. Hennebique and E. derstood, there was considerable support for the Centennial N'eve proposed to preempt Eiffel's project by constructing a Tower at the time. As one article in ScientificAmerican put it, wooden tower 300 meters high for the exposition to be held in "Not only shall we commemorate our birthday by the loftiest Brussels in 1888. The design of this quasi-Gothic fantasy (Fig. structure ever built by man, but by an edifice designed by 3) is not without a certain charm, although, as was pointed out American engineers, reared by American mechanics, and con- at the time, its construction costs would have been enormous structed of material purely the produce of American soil."3 and its stability would have been doubtful, to say the least." The first serious to build a tower taller than Eiffel's Ultimately, the plan for the Centennial Tower went the way attempt of earlier unrealized projects. However, as the enthusiastic originated with the financier Sir Edward Watkin and Benja- language of ScientificAmerican indicates, many saw the realiza- min Baker, constructor of the Firth of Forth bridge. These tion of a 1,000-foot tower not only as a spectacular com- men proposed a tower for London which, even though it memorative monument, but, perhaps even more important, would not be associated with an international exposition or as dramatic proof of the technological supremacy of the coun- major political anniversary, was nevertheless expected to be an try which could produce it. immensely profitable venture. In October of 1889, Watkin extended invitations for a competition, and 68 proposals for 3. "The CentennialTower One ThousandFeet High," Scientific the London Tower had been received by the beginning of American,Ser. 2, 30 (1874), 50. 4. Commonweal,5 (1889), 361. 1890. By its own account, the jury was generally disappointed 5. La Semainedes Constructeurs,Ser. 2, 1 (1887), 471. with the results of this competition and could not recommend JAY: TALLER THAN EIFFEL'S TOWER 147 Most of the designssubmitted were for towersof iron or steel, although there were a few projectsin concreteand stone as well.7The winningdesign, submittedby A. D. Stewart,J. W. Maclaren,and W. Dunn, was for a relativelyplain steel tower which would have had an eight-leggedbase 300 feet in diameter and would have risen to 1,200 feet. Recognizingthe need for ample concessionspace within the tower, the designers providedfor four galleryplatforms at regularintervals along the length of the tower. The plan for the Wembley Park Tower, named for its site on the MetropolitanRailway, was greatly simplifiedafter the site was selected. For the sake of economy, the numberof legs was reducedfrom eight to four, and the platformsfrom four to three. In its revisedform (Fig. 5), the Wembley Tower resembledthe Eiffel Tower even more closely than it had originally, althoughits height, 150 feet greater than the Eiffel Tower, would be all the more accentuatedby its more narrowbase.

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