The Minerva Building was a

skyscraper A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...

once planned for the eastern edge of

London's London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

main financial district, the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

. If built, it would have been the first building in the City of London to contain more than of office space.

History

A revised planning application by developers

Minerva plc Minerva plc is a London-based British developer and property company co-founded by Sir David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld. Garrard and Rosenfeld took the company public in 1996 and subsequently left the business. Minerva returned to private o ...

for the 53-storey version was submitted during the week ending 12 July 2002. The original proposal for the site, known as the St. Botolph's House, was a 14-storey office block. In 2001, this was revised to a 36-storey, tall office tower. A post-

September 11 Events Pre-1600 * 9 – The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends: The Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history and the Rhine is established as the border between the Empire and the so-called barbarians for the next four hun ...

revision brought structural and design changes and a further increase in height, to 53 floors and . Its location marks the Eastern gateway to the City and the building might have acted as a focus for the regeneration of the eastern City fringe. The site is outside the strategic views of St. Paul's, and does not contain listed buildings, although it does infringe upon a conservation area. It also lies within one of the three proposed viewing cones for the Tower of London, as do

30 St Mary Axe 30 St Mary Axe (previously known as the Swiss Re Building and informally known as the Gherkin) is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. ...

Heron Tower Salesforce Tower, 110 Bishopsgate (formerly Heron Tower) is a commercial skyscraper in London. It stands tall including its mast making it the second tallest building in the City of London financial district and the fifth List of tallest buil ...

and

Tower 42 Tower 42, commonly known as the NatWest Tower, is a skyscraper in the City of London. It is the fifth-tallest tower in the City of London, having been overtaken as the tallest in 2010 by the Heron Tower. It is the fifteenth-List of tallest ...

. Although the official height was 219m, the building was claimed to have planning permission for an antenna which might have seen its pinnacle height rise to . The developers claimed that a restaurant would have been open to the public on the highest floor. In March 2006, amidst the

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political scandal, it emerged that the

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific d ...

had not called in the application for the Minerva Building (nor Minerva's Park Place proposals in

Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extens ...

) shortly after two of Minerva's senior figures had made major donations and loans to the Labour Party. This led some commentators to make a connection between the loans and the decision. In mid-2006 it was announced that Minerva, deep within a period of financial consolidation, were no longer actively pursuing development of the site. A mid-rise commercial development has occurred instead on the site.

References

External links

Minerva Building on SkyscraperNewsMinerva official site
{{coord, 51.5146, -0.0770, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Skyscrapers in the City of London