If you could rebuild just one lost London building, which would it be? We asked Londonist readers, and you came back with an eye-openingly eclectic gamut of answers. Let's dig into the results.
Honourable mentions
A number of lost buildings fell just shy of fifth place, among them Whitehall Palace (burned down a long time ago), Earls Court Exhibition Centre (knocked down recently), the old Mappin & Webb building (controversially usurped by No. 1 Poultry, one of the buildings you'd most like to destroy), the old Wembley Stadium (replaced by *checks notes* the new Wembley Stadium) and the old St Paul's Cathedral, for which commenter Rxchxrd kindly left us some rebuilding instructions: "Put it somewhere else without demolishing the current one".
Euston is an area of particular contention. The only pub to get a mention from you was the demolished cask beer haven that was the Bree Louise (flattened in 2019 to make way for HS2 gubbins). It received not one, but two votes, and "was pretty much the perfect pub" according to reader David. That's not the last time Euston appears in this article.
But now, for the top five...
5th place: The Coal Exchange/The Firestone Factory/Savoy Palace
What a gloriously diverse trio of joint fifth-placers you gave us!
🏗️ The Coal Exchange: There were actually three iterations of London's Coal Exchange, but we'll assume those of you who voted for this meant the one you were alive to see, aka James Bunstone Bunning's frilly design which was wrapped around a cast iron skeleton, and opened by Prince Albert in 1849. Inevitably, the 1960s came along, and despite Nikolaus Pevsner claiming "its destruction would be unforgivable" they went and did it anyway.
🏗️ Firestone Tyre Factory: Brentford's 'Golden Mile' remains an art deco lover's idea of dying and going to heaven, but not all of its gorgeous factory buildings are still with is. If the stories are true, this 'palatial Egypto-Hollywood construction' should never have been a lost building; it's said that on learning the Firestone Tyre Factory could be listed, the owners demolished it over the course of a bank holiday weekend. Put them in jail, an ugly one.
🏗️ The Old Savoy Palace: None of our readers are old enough to remember the Savoy Palace, John of Gaunt's enviable waterside palace complex, where, apparently Geoffrey Chaucer started penning The Canterbury Tales. The Palace was — spoiler alert — destroyed in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The best way to console yourself? A stiff drink at the Savoy's American Bar.
4th place: The old Euston station
🏗️ It's no great surprise that so many of you hanker for the rebuilding of the old Euston station/its magnificent Great Hall, replete with indoor 'trees' fruiting with glowing globes — and a dictator-style statue of George Stephenson leering down at passengers. After all, when we asked which building you'd most like to demolish, the incumbent Euston station was firmly in your sights.
Euston station may now be, as Michael Palin put it, little but a series of "smooth, slippery marble and glass surfaces, so that people can be sloshed quickly and efficiently around," but at least the giant Stephenson survives; crane your neck up at him at York's National Railway Museum.
3rd place: The Astoria/Euston's Doric Arch
🏗️ Euston again! And though the high-flown Doric Arch/Euston Arch entrance was technically part of the old station, so many of you mentioned it by name, we had to give it its own entry. Not all of you were so complimentary towards the bludgeoned/chopped up/drowned-in-a-river arch, however. David wanted to see the rebuilding of "Whatever was on the site of the Euston Arch before the Euston Arch, so people would shut up about the bloody Euston Arch." Again, part of the arch does still exist (its gates). Again, you'll need travel to York to admire them.
🏗️ The Astoria Theatre — which had to make way for the Elizabeth line — was a Cross & Blackwell pickle warehouse-turned-gorgeous-1920s-cinema/ballroom, but most of our readers remembered it from its gigging days, when it hosted pretty much every big name in modern pop, including Oasis, Blur, Prince, Radiohead and Amy Winehouse. "It had such cultural significance in the world of music," said reader Richard.
2nd place: The Old London Bridge
🏗️ "I think it would be cool to walk across it and see all the shops, gatehouses (fake traitor heads included) and arches. Would have to be historically accurate though." So wrote Jordan, one of a number of readers who would like to see the old London Bridge reinstated. We're taking 'old London Bridge' to mean the one built in the 12th century, which became an ever-shifting palimpsest of houses/shops/chapels, etc until its demolition in 1832 by those pesky Victorians. You can keep your prim and proper Garden Bridges: the people have spoken, and next time a central London bridge is being mooted, we want it with all the ramshackle chaos, clutter and confusion of the medieval one. Not sure about those decapitated heads, though, even if they are fake...
And the winner is... The Crystal Palace!
🏗️ Securing just shy of 20 votes, the majestic Crystal Palace ("Versailles is not nearly so marvellous" enthused George Bradshaw once) is the building that Londonist readers would most like to see resurrected. "My mum saw it burn down," commented Rhonwen — something that we bet Rhonwen's mum never forgot. As tragic as it was beautiful, the Crystal Palace has an ethereal quality about it, partly because it looks so unreal in all those paintings and photos, and partly because very few living Londoners will have witnessed it before it was (accidentally) destroyed in 1936. Funnily enough, the Crystal Palace almost was rebuilt by a Chinese developer — under the auspices of enormo-project-lover Boris Johnson. Bet it wouldn't have held a candle to the original.
