About Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge is the Victorian portal to London, a castle on the water that opens its jaws to let ships pass. With its twin Gothic towers and blue suspension chains, it is often confused with London Bridge, but it is infinitely more spectacular. It is a masterpiece of 19th-century engineering, hiding a steel skeleton beneath a stone skin designed to match the nearby Tower of London.
Satellite views clearly show the double-leaf bascules (the parts that lift) in the center and the suspension bridges on either side connecting to the banks. It is the most downstream bridge in central London, the gateway from the sea. The high-level walkways, once a haunt for pickpockets, connect the tops of the towers, offering dizzying views.
Watching the bridge lift—a "bridge lift"—remains a magical London moment, stopping traffic and silencing the city for a vessel to pass. It represents the industrial might of the Victorian era dressed in fairy-tale robes. Whether crossing it on a double-decker bus or walking the glass floor high above the river, Tower Bridge is the definitive symbol of London's connection to its river.
The bridge was originally powered by a coal-fired hydraulic system: six steam engines pressurised water at 750 psi to drive the bascule-lifting pistons, and the machinery filled two underground engine rooms below street level on the south side. The system was in continuous service from 1894 until 1976, when it was replaced by an oil hydraulic system driven by electric motors; the original steam pumps have been preserved as a working museum inside the bridge, still capable of raising the roadway on ceremonial occasions. The design was chosen after a competition in 1876 that received 50 entries, most of them so bizarre—one proposed a slanting circular ramp, another a submerged glass tunnel—that the winning entry by Horace Jones took a further eight years to receive parliamentary approval, delayed by furious debate over whether any bridge should be permitted downstream of London Bridge at all.