'Babylonian Flats' in Victorian and Edwardian London

Abstract

The first half of this paper examines the controversy associated with the building of Queen Anne's Mansions, London's first high-rise flats, erected between 1873 and 1890, and a catalyst for the introduction of height restrictions in the London Building Acts of 1890 and 1894. Subsequent sections consider the building's place in the imagination of Londoners, the marketing of the mansions, which emphasised their height and novelty, and the characteristics of residents, especially as recorded in the 1901 census. The paper concludes by positioning Queen Anne's Mansions in wider debates about living in flats and the acceptability of high-rise buildings in nineteent-hand early twentieth-century London.