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The chairman of the Metropolitan Railway was Sir Edward Watkin , and he had ambitious plans to increase passenger use of the newly extended line by turning Wembley Park into a pleasure garden boasting sports grounds , pagodas , bandstands , a boating lake and theatre . The main attraction however would be a tower to rival that built in Paris by Gustave Eiffel .
Right : An OS map of Wembley Park in 1894 . The new Metropolitan Line and Wembley Park station are towards the top . The scale of the pleasure garden can be made out , with a cricket ground and grandstand , a lake , landscaped gardens and Wembley Tower on the southern side Map : Reproduced with
the permission of the National Library of Scotland
After Eiffel himself had turned down the offer of designing the new tower , a competition was held in 1890 inviting potential designs to be submitted . The 68 entries included some curious submissions , but the chosen design was for an eight-legged metal tower rising to 1,200 feet ( higher than Eiffel ’ s version ), and included observation decks , a hotel and restaurants .
Left : A colour sketch of Wembley Park , including how it would look once the tower was complete
politan Line , just 12 minutes ride from Baker Street .
The pleasure gardens were first used in October 1893 when football matches were staged , and the whole park was officially opened in May 1894 . To facilitate visitor access a new station , named Wembley Park , was built and opened on the Metro-
The park attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors , even though the tower , which due to cost had by this time been redesigned to a cheaper four-legged version , was still under construction . By September 1895 the first section of the tower , standing about 154 feet high , was completed and was opened to visitors who were able to ascend to the top and sample the hospitality provided in temporary structures . However , Watkin was by now
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