When it opened anyone could pay four shillings to take a lift to the top of the Post Office Tower, and in that first year over a million people took up the offer. But the viewing platforms closed in 1971 following a terrorist explosion and the famous revolving restaurant closed in 1980, making access to the top very difficult unless you were a BT employee, telethon phone-answerer or Noel Edmonds. Hurrah then that Open House managed to wangle some tickets, this for the second year running, and once again ran a ballot knowing these would be vastly oversubscribed. All you had to do was be extremely lucky, or be the plus-one of someone who'd got lucky themselves, and a lifelong ambition could be realised.
The Post Office Tower, a potent symbol of the white heat of technology, rose inexorably above the streets of Fitzrovia in the early Sixties. It needed to be over 150m tall so the microwave aerials attached to the top had a clear view of further towers on the horizon, and it needed to be in central London so the benefits of the new communications tower weren't negated by having to lay cables to the outskirts. It was opened on 8th October 1965 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson who rang up the Mayor of Birmingham to celebrate and then descended to the observation deck where, as Tony Benn's diary recalls, ‘it was so misty we could hardly see anything at all’. Thankfully the view this weekend was rather better. [12 photos]
The public entrance to the tower is generally shuttered and staff enter via a more austere lobby round the corner. So it was a bit of thrill to go up the special steps and present my credentials at the desk, security having been ramped up somewhat since that gents toilet exploded. The permanent artworks here are phonebox-based, but there are also display cases showcasing early ephemera like a first day cover with POT stamps, an original paper bag from the gift shop and the Queen's signature on the first page of the Visitors Book. They sell a few modern day souvenirs too, for example pin badges and tiny boxed gold tower models, although on closer inspection most of these appeared to be for the 50th anniversary which they're still trying to unload.
The most mobbed artefact was a menu from the Butlin's Top Of The Tower restaurant, presented mostly in French, in which Les Scampis cost £1.70, a side order of Les Courgettes Provençale 40p and 'Two large fillets of Sole, one coated with a Lobster Sauce and the other with a Champagne Sauce with a Bouchée of Lobster and a Barquette of Caviar' just £2.35. If you wanted the plebbier roast beef dinner (£1.75) you had to come for Saturday or Sunday lunch. And all this was just a lift ride away, perhaps alighting at floor 35 for the cocktail lounge before walking down to 34 for the à la carte. Originally each lift travelled at 1000 feet a minute but these days, according to the still-Imperial display screen, it's a steady 600 all the way.
You step straight out onto the deck. It's not a big space, despite being the widest part of the tower, at barely 20 metres in diameter. It's also somewhat nondescript now the restaurant's gone, all white walls and grey carpet, making the view across central London all the more impressive. We've got quite blase about visiting observation decks atop City skyscrapers of late, but this would have been utterly astonishing when it was the tallest building in London, a title it held until the Nat West Tower overtook in 1980. And it still offers a unique perspective on London, what with Westminster and Camden councils being much less cavalier about approving tall buildings, hence almost nothing gets in the way of the surrounding rooftops.
In excellent news the outer ring still rotates. It does this every 22 minutes so if you take a seat the whole of central London sweeps past you almost three times an hour. What's a little unnerving is that the colour plates identifying the landmarks beneath don't move, they merely inch past because they're attached to the outer wall. Look northwest for Wembley Stadium, northeast for Alexandra Palace, southeast for Tower Bridge and southwest for a surprisingly large Broadcasting House. What you get to see at its best depends very much on the angle of the sun and cloudcover, but I was particularly impressed by the lush extent of Regent's Park and merely squinted at the Crystal Palace and Croydon transmitters on the southern horizon.
Up here you can see that some of the finest stucco mansions don't look quite so snazzy from the back, and that the London Eye and Hyde Park are a lot further away than you might think. I had hoped to get a decent view of the broad demolished swathe that should one day be HS2, but annoyingly the angle wasn't quite right and the Euston Tower blocked a lot of it. One thing that really stood out was the relatively regimented grid formed by the adjacent streets, this because Fitzrovia and Marylebone feature a lot of densely packed Georgian rectangles. By contrast when you go up a tall building in the City you're surrounded by a mostly medieval street pattern, organically grown, with buildings scattered according to no obvious pattern.
You could have spent all your time up here staring through the windows but the space itself had a few additional intriguing features. A TV screen was showing a Pathé news report on the revolving restaurant, all Sixties glamour, beige meals and flash carpeting. You can watch that here if you want to get the flavour. The refreshment table topped with PG Tips, an urn and milk stirrers was likely temporary. I also wanted to interact properly with the revolving ring so stood with my feet either side of the dividing line and waited. After ten seconds one foot was noticeably further ahead than the other, after 20 I was becoming unstable and after 30 I was at risk of doing the splits so withdrew. A waiter could have stepped across easily without missing a beat.
Within the central core one door led to a staff-only galley, although I doubt this was used for cooking meals because the original kitchens were two floors up on 36. I was more interested in the door labelled Bathroom's, not for the criminal grammar but because these were signposted as being on floor 35 which meant the opportunity to climb a few metres higher. This turned out to be via a narrow spiralling staircase, again white-walled, past a somewhat unnerving fire alarm. I tried to imagine glamorous hepcats descending with Babychams in hand on their way to enjoy Duck à l'Orange or Chicken Supreme, but the illusion was dashed somewhat by the discovery of a row of cubicles and a bored-looking security guard in a garret alongside. The view from the Shard's toilets is better.
My Dad had the good fortune to go to the top of the Post Office Tower while it was being built, such was his job, and remembers that the lift didn't go all the way at the time. 60 years later I have finally followed in his footsteps, taking the more comfortable route, and have finally ticked off a long-standing item on my bucket list. One day you too may follow, especially now the building's been purchased by a hotel company, although that complex transformation remains many years off we were told. In the meantime thank you Open House for the joy of a once in a lifetime opportunity, atop a building the same age as I am.
For Open House this weekend I visited twelve different and varied properties, ranging from underwhelm to amazeballs. I'll save the wow until later but here are brief reports on the others, hopefully as testament that exploring otherwise inaccessible spaces is an opportunity not to be missed.
There are also now 42 photos on Flickr if you want see a bit more from my double weekend.
It's always good to visit an architectural practice during Open House because they tend to have really good buildings and can talk about them in depth. This one's for Allies and Morrison on Southwark Street, not far from Tate Modern, and won a RIBA award in 2004 when they moved in. A&M masterplanned the Olympic Park and Kings Cross, amongst many other megaprojects, so I thanked them for the former and kept quiet about the second. We were led round in small groups to tour the building, from the unlofty roof terrace to the in-house model room via at least four different kinds of staircase. Making 3D models of potential layouts is still important to allow designers and clients to understand what's proposed, and the end result is a huge variety of gorgeous mini artworks, many of which are dotted around the offices as either inspiration or decoration. Thanks, I enjoyed this one.
As sustainable green eco-construction goes, a five storey office block made entirely from timber is about as good as it gets, indeed this Shoreditch newcomer is London's tallest fully-engineered timber office building. All the walls and partitions are wooden, be that ribbed bars in the lobby or relentless planking on the stairs. In the basement I made the mistake of gushing about the colour palette to a lady who told me she wasn't an interior designer, she was the architect. On the roof terrace I dodged the deckchairs and watched the Overground rushing bydown below. And all credit to the volunteers who had to keep beeping their smartcards to let us through doors and into lifts, because modern security does not fit with free flow exploration.
307 Regent Street is the birthplace of British cinema because this is where the Lumière brothers premiered their firstshort film outside France in 1896. The Polytechnic Institution had pioneered the presentation of magic lantern shows to a mass audience, and also introduced London to Pepper's Ghost, so was the obvious location for a debut cinematographic demo. The public cinema which followed showed a diet of military films, then diversified into natural history and travelogues before returning to use as an educational space. In 1951 (as the Cameo Polytechnic Cinema) it showed the very first X-rated film in the UK, La Vie Commence Demain, and in the swinging Sixties hosted film premieres before closing again in 1980. Ten years ago a majorrefit added a single rack of seating with space for a foyer underneath and this is now a renowned independent cinema, although still owned by the University of Westminster. Their archivist delivered a profusely illustrated backhistory, and advised that if you want to hear the Comptonorgan it's always played before the matinee on the first Monday of the month.
The shabby arcade cut-through above the District line station at Victoria has been closed for five years for a glow-up but finally reopened last week. TfL are well chuffed with it, not just because they've restored it to its Edwardian glory but because they can make a lot of dosh in rent by leasing out the retail units. So far the only tenant is a cookie shop but the arcade does look good, with ornamental scrolls and marble risers and replica luminaires and inset tiling and one particularly dazzling Art Deco sunburst on the front of the next unit to open. It's already won an award. TfL are so chuffed they made it the subject of last week's only press release, but alas almost no news organisations used it, and perhaps they'd have been more excited if they'd chatted to one of the enthusiastic employees involved in delivering the project like what I did.
I've lost count of how many livery halls I've visited through Open House and have now ticked off five more. The finest were the first and last.
• Apothecaries Hall is the City's oldest livery hall, dating to the late 1660s, and a classic of the genre. It was rammed with liverymen and liverywomen, as well as visitors, requiring a one-way system to usher everyone past the medicine jars, stained glass windows and gilded ephemera.
• Bakers Hall was new on the list this year. They have the first Modernist livery hall, which is the fourth on the same site after fire and bombs got the others. My favourite features were the three John Piper stained glass windows in the Livery Hall, each of which represents a different historic conflagration. Rather less impressive was the table of paid-for refreshments where the biscuits were mass produced and plastic wrapped rather than properly baked. Nobody was biting.
• Coopers Hall occupies a small but splendid Georgian house on the edge of Spitalfields. Barrelmaking isn't common these days so they've had to reinvent themselves somewhat as charitable brethren rather than artisanal supporters.
• Painters Hall has the best portraits on the walls, obviously, although their full-length Queen Elizabeth looks patently wrong and has recently been demoted to a side wall to make way for a much better portrait of her son as Prince as Wales.
• Stationers Hall lurks behind Ludgate Hill and is unexpectedly large, or rather a chain of capacious spaces. The largest is the Great Hall which is bedecked with shields and banners, and where various bookbinders were demonstrating their trade and wares. The livery company represents printers and publishers so not unexpectedly its handout was a booklet which felt luxurious to the touch, I'd say probably 300-350 gsm.
Additionally there were...
The Invisible One: I thought I knew where this was - easily reached through a courtyard - but the gates were locked so I walked all the way around the block and saw no signs so gave up. If I'd read further down the listing I'd have seen I was supposed to walk to the back of a car park and find a hidden entrance there, so I failed and the signage failed.
The Badly Described One: "Come behind the scenes" said the Open House blurb, but when I turned up the patronising lady on the door said "behind the scenes" was only for booked tours and I'd missed those but I could go to the cafe. If it had been described properly I wouldn't have bothered going.
The Too Early One: I had two properties close together but the first didn't last as long as I expected so the second hadn't opened when I arrived. I had to weigh up whether it was worth hanging around for 20 minutes (hmm, it's quite small) and decided not so moved on.
The Bit Late One: I thought there were 45 minutes left but when I finally found the right building the security guard said she was about to close up. She didn't seem too pleased when the tour guide offered to show me round anyway, but I wouldn't have missed much if I'd have been turned away first time.
The Abandoned One: I decided to visit a geographical outlier but on the way there my train broke down, then the train behind us overtook without our driver mentioning this, so my apologies to the far-flung community centre but I gave up and went home.
(and by my calculations that takes me over the 250 mark for Open House Properties I Have Visited Since 2002, hurrah!)
