Few streets symbolise the dizzying changes in the City of London landscape over the past half century better than Bishopsgate on the eastern fringe of the Square Mile.
When 99 Bishopsgate went up for Hongkong Bank in 1976 it was one of the tallest towers in the City at 24 storeys. It also boasted the fastest lifts in Europe. At that time Bishopsgate was a largely run down strip of low-rise buildings that bled into what was then the seedy and impoverished East End districts of Shoreditch and Spitalfields.
