Popping up 600 feet above London’s skyline, the BT Tower has been a West End landmark since the 1960s.
Now, the once high-tech monolith that began its life as the Post Office Tower will be transformed into a hotel in a £275 million sale.
BT has agreed to sell the nearly 60-year-old, Grade-II listed tower to American chain MCR Hotels, offering future punters the chance to sleep in the clouds.
Camden-based Heatherwick Studio, the eponymous architecture practice of Thomas Heatherwick, is tasked with “reimagining” the site into a luxury hotel.
It began life as the Post Office Tower and was officially opened as a hub for the UK’s communications networks in 1965 by then-prime minister Harold Wilson.
The site, bristling with microwave communication aerials, was designed by Eric Bedford and G.R. Yeats and signified the technological optimism of the Swinging Sixties.
University students also ran races to the top.
The record top to ascend 37 floors was just under five minutes.
You could once enjoy dinner the mechanically spinning 34th floor restaurant run by Butlins, which revolved once every 23 minutes.
But the facility was largely closed to the public following a bombing - claimed by both anarchists and the IRA - in 1971.
More recently, its LCD screen facade beamed out stay-at-home lockdown messages, and congratulations on the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Amid a transition to fibre optic and the cloud, BT says the tower’s microwave aerials were removed more than a decade ago, as they were no longer needed to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country.
To find out more about this end of an era - and the beginning of a new one, we’re joined in the studio by the Evening Standard’s business editor Jonathan Prynn.
Listen above, or wherever you find your podcasts.
