Its construction was an ambitious project to create a 358-metre (1,175 ft)-high visitor attraction in Wembley Park to the north of the city, led by the railway entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin.

Although his channel tunnel project failed in 1881, Watkin remained a driven innovator, inspired by grand schemes which could augment his railway empire.

He also considered transporting Londoners out into the countryside as a business opportunity and needed a major attraction to lure the crowds out of the city and onto his trains.

One design included a 1/12-scale model of the Great Pyramid of Giza, envisioned as a "colony of aerial vegetarians, who would grow their own food in hanging gardens".

[9][10] It was to have two observation decks – each with restaurants, theatres, dancing rooms and exhibitions – winter gardens, Victorian Turkish baths[3] and a 90-bedroom hotel.

The top of the tower, reached by a system of lifts, was to provide a fresh-air sanatorium and an astronomical observatory, taking advantage of the clearer air offered by the altitude.

At the same time, the surrounding park began to be laid out with a cricket pitch and a boating lake, in readiness for the first visitors.

[3][12] Despite the failure and destruction of Watkin's star attraction, Wembley Park continued to flourish as a popular recreation venue, offering football, cricket, cycling, rowing, athletics and, in winter, ice skating on the frozen lake.

[7] After the war, Wembley was selected as the site for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition and the park land was purchased from the Metropolitan Railway company.

The story of Watkin's Tower was recounted briefly in the 1973 BBC documentary by the then Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, Metro-land.

In the programme, Betjeman described Watkin's vision of creating an engineering wonder in a little-known rural area north of London: Beyond Neasden there was an unimportant hamlet where for years the Metropolitan didn't stop.

The museum formerly allowed visitors to build a tower before it came tumbling down because of the vibrating floor, however, this has been removed since the renovation of the library in 2015.