Most people think that the Bank of England has always been there, a national institution set in stone. The truth is much stranger.

Skyscrapers always provoke some extreme reactions, and the sale of London’s Gherkin as a result of the bankruptcy of one of its current owners is no exception. For a century, ever since the property explosions of New York and Chicago, the tall building has come to symbolize the best and the worst of the modern city, and of the economies that have produced it.