History
The building stands on the former site of the Baltic Exchange, the headquarters of a global marketplace for ship sales and shipping information. On 10 April 1992 the Provisional IRA detonated a bomb close to the Exchange, causing extensive damage to the historic building and neighbouring structures.
The United Kingdom government's statutory adviser on the historic environment, English Heritage, and the City of London governing body, the City of London Corporation, were keen that any redevelopment must restore the building's old façade onto St. Mary Axe. The Exchange Hall was a celebrated fixture of the ship trading company.
After English Heritage later discovered the damage was far more severe than previously thought, they stopped insisting on full restoration, albeit over the objections of the architectural conservationists who favoured reconstruction. Baltic Exchange sold the land to Trafalgar House in 1995. Most of the remaining structures on the site were then carefully dismantled, the interior of Exchange Hall and the façade were preserved, hoping for a reconstruction of the building in the future. The architectural salvage, its eventual sale for £800,000 and move to Tallinn awaiting reconstruction as the centrepiece of the city's commercial sector can be seen in the Baltic Exchange listing.
In 1996 Trafalgar House submitted plans for the Millennium Tower, a 386 metres (1,266 ft) building with more than 140,000 m2 (1,500,000 sq ft) office space, apartments, shops, restaurants and gardens. This plan was dropped after objections for being totally out-of-scale with the City of London and anticipated disruption to flight paths for both City and Heathrow airports; the revised plan for a lower tower was accepted.
The tower's topmost panoramic dome, known as the "lens", recalls the iconic glass dome which covered part of the ground floor of the Baltic Exchange.
The gherkin name was applied to the current building at least as far back as 1999, referring to that plan's highly unorthodox layout and appearance.
Read more about this topic: 30 St Mary Axe
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)