walk/tour
The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, WC1E 7BT
what3words: retire.cloak.slope
60 years on from the opening of the BT Tower, and a few months on from its sale to a hotel consortium, participants are invited on a research-led walk around Fitzrovia to reflect on the hidden stories and unseen infrastructures that contribute to the creation of the city and its green spaces.
Goodge Street
Euston
24, 29, 390, 73
Ending at the London National Park City Visitors Centre at 80 Mortimer Street. Closest station: Oxford Circus.
Terrain will largely be tarmac and pavements, with level access possible throughout.
We will walk at a gentle pace throughout, with water and toilet facilities available at the start, mid-point, and end of the walk.
Since the 1880s, St Paul’s Cathedral has benefited from protected sightlines extending deep into suburban London parks and commons. Less widely known is that the BT Tower (originally the GPO Tower) has enjoyed its own form of protection: not for aesthetic or heritage reasons, but due to its operational role as a telecommunications beacon.
For decades, the tower relied on clear, uninterrupted microwave paths routed through a network of repeater stations in suburban London and the home counties. Any tall building constructed within these corridors risked causing signal loss or distortion. As a result, the BT Tower acted as a brake on overdevelopment in parts of the West End and Bloomsbury, shaping both the skyline and our relationship with public squares and parks in ways that have been under-acknowledged.
Current development plans propose a conversion of the tower from telecommunications node, originally designed in-house by the UK’s Ministry of Public Building and Works, into a hotel developed by a US-headquartered multinational hospitality brand.
Framing the BT Tower as a historic horizontal commons and green-space landmark, this tour will highlight the multitude of factors that interweave in the production of ‘public’ spaces, contrasting these with how our urban commons are being re-shaped through development capital and the growing ubiquity of pseudo-public spaces. We will trace and record a series of sightlines to the tower from these parks, squares, and incidental green spaces, whilst consulting historic records and images along the way.
Led by artist-researcher and London National Park City Ranger Jordan Rowe, and cultural historian Dr David Anderson, the walk will culminate at the London National Park City Visitors Centre on Mortimer Street for refreshments, which will be followed by a launch event for an associated publication.
With thanks to the London National Park City Foundation, the UCL Department of Geography, and The Building Centre.
Drop in
community/cultural, gallery, concert/performance space, mixed use, institution/profession, art in the public realm, museum
Loughborough Pearson's red brick building is unimposing from the outside, but inside is a riot of Gothic Revival design. Golden mosaics reveal the character of the Grade II* listed chapel, built as part of the Middlesex Hospital.
J. L. Pearson, 1891
Drop in / Guided tour
community/cultural, library, museum, art in the public realm, concert/performance space, education
Grade II-listed Georgian domestic building c.1760, formerly part of the Bedford Estate. Interior refurbished 1925 to form lecture hall (restored 2014), library, bookshop and offices. Oak woodwork and green Doulton tiles line the staircase.
Unknown, 1760
