How a Victorian tower block brought trams back to London

now as a guy who sometimes gets mistakenly referred to as a historian one of the things I find most interesting about history is the way cause and effect works in unexpected directions recently while I was researching the trams through Cen I came across a little chain of cause and effect that I found quite interesting there's a strange and indirect path that takes us from a block of Flats in Westminster via a change in the banking laws in the city of London and an abandoned dock on the aisle of dogs ultimately leading us to trams coming back to Cen what it comes down to is tall buildings now for centuries the tallest building in London was St Paul's Cathedral there was neither the technology nor the requirement to build anything taller in the 19th century though everything changed London became a denser busier City new methods of construction and new inventions like the Lyft meant that when it came to tall buildings the sky was the limit almost literally the thing is London is a city that likes a good view anything that obscures the views in the center of town is liable to meet with opposition that's one of the reasons why we have so many underground Railways the authorities objected to viaducts being built all over the city and West End the matter came to a head with Queen Anne's Mansions this was a 14-story block of luxury Flats completed in 1894 when it appeared in Westminster it caused no small measure of controversy one of the objectors was no less a personage than Queen Victoria herself who complained that the block obscured her view from Buckingham Palace to the houses of Parliament it's always a good idea to keep an eye on those MPS another objection not from the Queen the this time was that such large blocks carried a safety risk could such a building be evacuated in the event of a fire in response to many concerns by many people the London building Act was passed in 1894 this tightened up various regulations but most importantly for our purposes it set a height limit on buildings at 100 ft while it wasn't legally impossible to build tall buildings it was not easy and it would remain difficult into the 1960s in Cen an unexpected opportunity arose in the 20th century the Town Center suffered heavily from bombing during the Blitz the Cen Corporation took the view that it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good and had the Cen Corporation Act passed in 1956 as they saw it the city of London was very restricted in terms of what could be built but Cen had nothing but empty space people could throw throw up as many office blocks as they liked and throw up they did Cen became synonymous with brutalist Towers now this wasn't all good it's fair to say that architectural tastes have changed since the 60s and70s and the corporation didn't give much consideration for how the vastly increased number of people would get around the rebuilt Town Center meaning that roads became choked with traffic a new and rather der atory word entered the language koniz meaning basically soulless and Ill thought out town planning but on the whole things were good until 1986 when the Big Bang occurred not to be confused with the beginning of the universe which I understand took place sometime before the80s no this is the financial one it's all rather complicated and in truth I don't really understand it myself I am not great at understanding the ways of Finance as my accountant will confirm if and when they let him out but long story short a lot of the old regulations governing the financial markets were abolished which led to a boom in trading which in turn attracted huge International firms to London this was also the time when it was becoming a major part of office life all of this meant that the old city of London Office Buildings mostly Victorian weren't up to the task now to be fair the rule had been relaxed on tall buildings in central London but it still wasn't something that had really caught on one of the problems was protected views meaning that you couldn't build anything that would block the sideline of certain historic buildings most famously St Paul's Cathedral so they couldn't just knock a bunch of skyscrapers up to house all these newcomers so what to do well I don't know how the lads in Cen felt about all this but I'd imagine pretty confident except that another change was about to take place a Texan gentleman named Gwar travelstead was taking an intense interest in the docklands The Docks had once been named the busiest Harbor in the world but shipping had outgrown them even the largest of London's docks were incapable of handling modern container ships which instead docked at Tilbury further down river and so the docks fell into disuse devastating the local community the Government tried to redel Vel the area but getting anything done proved difficult it required the cooperation of several different local authorities and organizations and investors just weren't interested in all that nonsense in 1981 the London dockland Development Corporation was formed to take charge and cut through the red tape the aisle of dogs was declared an Urban Enterprise Zone all of this came together when Credit swis First Boston cast an eye over London to take advantage of the deregulated Banks travelstead was the head of their real estate division and proposed a radical idea turn the deric docks at Canary WF on the aisle of dogs into a new financial center now the story of canary WF is complicated and I've told it on this channel before but the project was taken over by a firm called Olympia and York in 1988 and the first office blocks opened in 1991 these were a new and modern kind of block purpose-built for the new electronic age of High Finance in the city of London they responded by relaxing planning regulations further there was a sort of arms race between the two centers which actually ended up bankrupting Canary WARF in the early '90s but what of Cen well it didn't have a hope the long established city was starting to modernize and Canary Warf was far closer to Central London than Cen was there was frankly too much office space but the distance wasn't the only thing that made Canary WF more attractive than cuden it had a new light rail system the Revolutionary doland's light Railway this was a lowcost Metro which to be honest became a victim of its own success it drove development in the docklands and as a result ended up with far more traffic than it could handle Canary WF would later gain a tube station and later still an Elizabeth Line Station from 1991 the DLR ran trains directly to Bank in the city Cen by contrast was not very well served by public transport there were lots of railway lines in the area but they were mostly fairly illogical indirect and unconnected the underground didn't come anywhere near although in the planning stages the Victoria line had been intended to come here many nearby suburbs were only connected by buses ironically the DLR could have come here well I mean it wouldn't have been called the DLR but when the government was looking for potential IAL places to test the light rail concept the poorly used railway lines around Cen were among the sites suggested so in the '90s the local Authority thought to themselves but why not us Cen seemed like a perfect candidate for a Light Rail Project of its own many of those illogical indirect and unconnected railway lines seemed perfect for conversion into such a system what was more even if Canary WF had stolen their Thunder they still had traffic problems left over from koniz so in 2000 they got the tram link a lowcost railway well Tramway really which was hugely successful both as a method of transport and as a means for revitalizing the town now admittedly it didn't turn croon into the canary Warf of the South but there's no denying the positive impact it's had in giving people better access to work retail and Leisure facilities as well as reducing the traffic on the roads and just generally making the area around round Cen more livable so someone builds a block of flats in Westminster in the 1890s so it gets hard to build toall in the city so Cen builds tall buildings instead then some dudes build in the docklands so Cen needs a new way to fill its tall buildings so they build a tram like I say cause and effect works in unexpected directions [Music] sometimes well I hope you enjoyed this video if so then please do leave a like and perhaps consider subscribing for more if that's your jam I would like as ever to thank my donors on Kofi and patreon and here on YouTube for your support you are the deregulation to my bank and I'll see you all again very soon cheerio for

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 80,828

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Id: 5bPOzpLkxIg

Length: 10min 32sec (632 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023