Thats one absorbing post NickTaylor,.
This makes me want to cry. Those towers were nearly 500ft tall, the building was the first great wrought iron structure - if it had survived it would be this earlier, larger structure not the Eiffel Tower that would be symbolic of that landmark feat of engineering. The complex housed huge trees inside and was surrounded by a network of ornate fountains, including the largest in the world at the time. When the fire took hold flocks of escaped parrots and exotic birds flew across London, dying over the next few days from to the cold.
Londons been destroyed or suffered heavy citywide damage no less than 8 times in its history (war-desertion-war-war-riot-revolt-fire-war) and has lost a HUGE amount of buildings, tho many have miraculously survived all that, right from the original Roman Wall. What gets me though is the mindless destruction postwar planners did - no need for bombs or fires anymore.
The destruction of the huge and iconic Euston Station arch was the turning point in 1973. Despite massive opposition British Rail went ahead with its 'modernisation' plans for the entire terminus, its excuse that the platforms needed to be lengthened for longer trains - fair enough - except when the brutalist new block was finished, due to budget constraints, the platforms were in fact no longer at all.
The arch went too, the cherry on top to the destruction in order to widen the road - a wider road that also never materialised. British Rail made the executive decision not to rebuild the arch to the left, not even to record or store the building blocks despite sensitive onsite workmen who dismantled it having done so already. Thirty years later the fate of the arch was discovered - broken up and thrown as lining into a canal. Utter
psychotic standard business practice - no sense of giving unless its to ones own advantage, no concept of guilt or remorse or charity, brutal competitiveness, expoitative, and everything it does it does to make to its own benefit.
Since that loss heritage groups vowed never to let this happen again, saving the whole Covent Garden district from being concreted the next year - in part thanks to Euston there are now over 20,000 protected buildings in the city, more than any other in the world.