London's 1890 Eiffel Tower rival was built to 47 metres, then blown up as a ruin

historyThe Public Domain Review1890–1904 · Wembley Park, London, England

London's 1890 Eiffel Tower rival was built to 47 metres, then blown up as a ruin

the gist

After Paris's Eiffel Tower opened in 1889, London ran a competition for its own tower, and 68 designs were submitted. The winning design by Stewart, McLaren and Dunn was built at Wembley Park, but the Metropolitan Tower Company ran into trouble with marshy ground, delays and money problems. Construction stopped after 47 metres, and the unfinished structure, nicknamed Watkin's Folly, stood for years before being demolished in 1904. The stadium built over the site in 1923 had its concrete foundations rediscovered when the pitch was lowered in 2000.

how it works

Tall iron towers need deep, stable foundations to carry their weight and resist wind. Marshy, soft ground can shift and sink under the load, which delays construction and drives up costs. Once a company runs out of money, a half-built structure can be left standing.

so what

The failed tower shows how ambitious public projects can collapse when ground conditions and finances are underestimated. Its foundations still lie beneath Wembley Stadium, a buried reminder of a London skyline that never existed.

the bigger pattern

Grand towers built to rival Paris include the Blackpool Tower and the Watkin's Tower project itself, and many similar iron towers were abandoned or demolished. The Eiffel Tower survived partly because it was financed and built to a clear plan.

fun fact

Many of the designs in the competition were suspiciously similar to the Eiffel Tower.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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