André the giant

On a normal Thursday morning in February, the photographer Greg Funnell and I were scouting potential shoot locations at Chiltern Firehouse ahead of an interview with André Balazs, the hotel’s owner and maestro. At one point, we were shown through a nondescript door on the second floor, and taken up a spiral wooden staircase inside a tall, red-brick Victorian tower, emerging at the top to find a panoramic view across London, or at least the parts of London that hadn’t been blotted out by metal skyscrapers and vast office buildings. This was the old watchtower from which a scout at the ‘Manchester Square Fire Station’, as it was then known, would look out for tell-tale billows of smoke before raising the alarm. We admired the leadwork on the roof, invisible to everyone else in the world: all the matcha fanciers and Leica swingers on Chiltern Street below; all the power brokers, American actors and wide-eyed tourists on the restaurant terrace beneath us. The leadwork mimicked a licking flame, creeping up from each corner of the pretty, red-slated gables – a little architectural joke; an irony crafted for the sole enjoyment of the watchman in the tower. I’m sure that Greg said, “They don’t make them like this anymore,” as we looked out across Marylebone. Then we descended the steps and the door was locked behind us, and we had no idea at all that we would almost certainly be the last people to ever set foot in the tower or look out across its particular view of London or see the little joke hidden against the eaves.