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Mary Axe, London
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Location: St Mary Axe, London, City of London, London, England, United Kingdom. (51°30′52″N 00°04′49″W).
St Mary Axe, London
30 St Mary Axe (widely known informally as "the Gherkin" and previously the Swiss Re Building) is a skyscraper in London's main financial district, the City of London, completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. With 41 floors, the tower is 180 metres (591 ft) tall and stands on a street called St Mary Axe, on the site of the former Baltic Exchange, which was extensively damaged in 1992 by the explosion of a bomb placed by the Provisional IRA.
History of St Mary Axe, London:
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.
