London restores the 1929-31 control room of Battersea Power Station, which once supplied Buckingham Palace and Parliament
London has restored the control room of Battersea Power Station (1929-31), which once kept the lights on at Buckingham Palace and Parliament. The power station has been out of operation since 1981, and since then its premises have been partly mothballed and guarded as a piece of England's historical context. A place so distinctive could hardly escape notice: the wall of instruments and the semicircular control desk appeared as scenery in the Oscar-winning film "The King's Speech" and featured in Monty Python sketches. Now the Art Deco interior will be available for events and public visits. But the control room is not the only thing to have been restored and opened to the public: the whole complex of the historic power station is being turned into a museum. Visitors will even be able to ascend a hundred-metre chimney, in which a glass lift is to be installed. Inside the power station itself there will also be residential blocks with apartments. One feels like sending greetings to the Moscow developers, who plainly prefer demolishing to devising ways of preserving.
