London's first skyscraper was built in 1925. We've seen four distinct waves since.
100 years ago, London was a flat city, punctuated only by steeples, chimneys and the dome of St Paul's. It is now a vertical metropolis with 101 buildings taller than the old cathedral.
Indeed, 2025 can be considered the centenary of the London skyscraper. Adelaide House, the gainly, dignified office block that still stands on the north-east corner of London Bridge, is often described as the first of its kind.
At just 11 storeys and 43 m (140 ft), few would consider it a skyscraper by today's standards. In its day, though, this was the tallest structure on the river, and the first steel-framed building in the Square Mile.
Earlier structures, notably Queen Anne's Mansions in Victoria, had reached similar heights, and others such as the Ritz and Savoy had employed steel frames. But Adelaide House was the first office block to rise in such a way, in imitation of the towers going up in Manhattan. This proof-of-concept design set the stage for taller buildings over the decades to come. It is fitting that the Shard, London's current tallest, rises over the opposite end of the bridge, seven times taller.
London's high-rise development has proceeded in fits and starts ever since. Much can (and has) been written about the pros and cons of tall buildings, but this article is more concerned with their historical development, which can be divided into four distinct 'Ages'.
1. The 'Classic Age': 1925-1939
Representative buildings: Adelaide House (1925); 55 Broadway (1929); Shell Mex House (1932); Senate House (1937)
London's relationship with the skyscraper began so well. From the 1920s, a sprinkling of art deco office blocks, inspired by structures in New York, grew up from the London clay. As we've seen, the first of this new breed was Adelaide House, but this was soon followed by larger, more-scrapery propositions.
The two largest and most celebrated were both the work of Charles Holden, whose team also designed many of London's finest Tube stations. 55 Broadway, which served as the headquarters of London Underground, and the University of London's Senate House were successively the tallest buildings in London other than St Paul's. Both are lauded today, but proved highly controversial when first constructed.
2. The 'Faster/Higher/Cheaper Age': 1961-1980
Representative buildings: Empress State Building (1961); Shell Centre (1961); Millbank Tower (1963); Centre Point (1966); Drapers Gardens (1967); Euston Tower (1970); Guy's Hospital (1974); Barbican towers (1973-76); NatWest Tower, now Tower 42 (1980)
The Second World War brought a cessation to most construction projects, and nobody was going to build tall during a period of aerial bombardment. After the war, the priority was on rebuilding housing rather than large commercial blocks. It is in the domestic realm that we find the first post-war high-rises.
The very first residential tower block grew up in 1949 near Lamb's Conduit Street. Called 'Blemundsbury', the 11-storey tower still exists, three-quarters of a century later. Many other residential towers were thereafter built across London, most famously the Trellick and Balfron Towers of Ernő Goldfinger. Not all were of great quality, as the 1968 tragedy at Ronan Point revealed.
The boom in office high-rise did not start until the 1960s. Millbank Tower, built near what is now Tate Britain in 1963, is often billed as London's first true skyscraper. But it's all a matter of definition. Other candidates might be the slightly earlier Shell Centre, which bosses the cluster of newer towers behind the London Eye, or perhaps the oft-forgotten Empress State Building, out near Earl's Court. Both make the 100 metre mark.
Thereafter, a dizzying upthrust of towers spread across the capital. The Square Mile saw the biggest boom, with a dozen or more blocks rising to serve the booming financial sector. Others like the BT Tower (if it can be considered a skyscraper), Centre Point and the Southbank Tower came to dominate other parts of town. These latter two were designed by Richard Seifert, who would also contribute Drapers Gardens (now demolished) and the NatWest Tower, the tallest building in the UK (183 metres or 600 feet) when completed in 1980.
With the completion of the NatWest Tower, London's high-rise boom stalled. Nothing over 100 metres would be built for another decade.
Interregnum: One Canada Square
The next aerial intruder was something else. One Canada Square, widely called the Canary Wharf Tower, reached 235 metres, much taller than anything else in the UK at the time (and briefly the tallest tower in the European Union). It looked all the taller for its location, out in the derelict old docklands, which were still in the early days of revival. Although quickly surrounded by mid-rise towers, it was the only true skyscraper at the Wharf for the next decade — and the only tall building of note to be completed in the 1990s.
Its 1990 date puts it slap-bang in the middle between two 'Ages' of skyscraper development. Doctor Who fans might like to think of it as the Paul McGann of skyscrapers.
3. The 'Bonkers Age': 2004-2018
Representative buildings: The Gherkin (2003); Strata (2010); The Shard (2012); The Cheesegrater (2013); The Walkie Talkie (2014); The Pinnacle (cancelled); arguably The Scalpel (2018)
A decade after Canary Wharf, Ken Livingstone swept to power as the first Mayor of London, at the head of the newly minted Greater London Authority. Livingstone was broadly in favour of tall buildings, as was the City of London's planning department under Peter Rees.
After years of only low- and mid-rise development (notably at Broadgate), the City of London once again began to reach for the skies. It did so with some panache. The first new tower, built on the site of the IRA-damaged Baltic Exchange, was 30 St Mary Axe. Its curvaceous form brought it the nickname of the 'Erotic Gherkin', now usually just 'the Gherkin'.
This project kickstarted a whole raft of new towers, many of which had distinctive profiles that spawned playful nicknames. 22 Leadenhall became 'the Cheesegrater' thanks to its sloping edge. The bulbous 20 Fenchurch Street was dubbed 'the Walkie Talkie'. Across the water, the Shard already had its nickname in its official title. We even got a 'Can of Ham'.
This age of inventiveness was largely restricted to the Square Mile, though oddball towers like Elephant and Castle's Strata — which looked like an electric shaver and featured never-working wind turbines — popped up here and there.
The Canary Wharf estate, meanwhile, was also building fast, throwing up well-engineered if less memorable towers aplenty. This would soon become the norm for other parts of town.
4. The 'Whatever Age': 2019-present
Representative buildings: 22 Bishopsgate (2019); 100 Bishopsgate (2019); 55 Bishopsgate (2030?); 99 Bishopsgate (2030?); One Undershaft (2030?)
The City's eccentric skyline began to run out of steam in the mid-2010s. A symbolic death knell was sounded by the cancellation of 'The Pinnacle', a helter-skelter-topped skyscraper that would have been the City's tallest. Construction stalled at the seventh floor, earning the non-tower the nickname of The Stump, or London's smallest skyscraper.
It was eventually demolished and replaced by the bland behemoth of 22 Bishopsgate. Now, I'm sure it provides very agreeable office space, and the free public viewing gallery is a big win, but from afar it is impossible to love the City's current tallest building.
This blandification has continued with a slew of unremarkable towers near Broadgate, Bishopsgate and Fenchurch Street. The next wave will see a quartet of giants, all of which are admittedly a little more interesting than your typical Canary Wharf 'scraper, but none of which are distinctive enough to warrant a nickname. (That said, One Undershaft will have a weird tongue-like protrusion near the base.)
These are the 'whatever' skyscrapers... functional, largely inoffensive if you don't mind tall buildings, but nothing too showy. Most new residential schemes, such as the towers at Nine Elms, Stratford, City Road, Canada Water and elsewhere, also answer to this description.
After four waves of development and much experimentation, London has settled on a skyscraper style whose appearance neither charms nor offends. A good old British compromise... of the highest order.
