Minutes from the Ostkreuz Tower design planning committee meeting (ca. 1912):
Head of City Planning: How are the plans going for my diabolical lair of doom and despair? [strokes evil overlord‘s pointy beard and burst out with maniacal laughter]
Chief Architect: About that. I got your specs and there are a few details we need to go over…
HoCP: [cocks eyebrow mid-maniacal-laughter] ?
CA: Page 6, paragraph 13. When you write “The Tower of Doom shall be standing at the top of a massive dark volcano spitting rivers of glowing lava amidst bursts of thunder and the howling of a thousand souls bound for eternal damnation”… I don’t think we have the budget for that.
HoCP: What? But that was a fundamental part of the design!
CA: Sorry.
HoCP: What about the flock of fire-breathing dragons, then?
CA: I doubt Animal Control will go for that.
HoCP: The moat? At least give me the moat and giant man-eating crocodiles!
CA: We looked into that and it just doesn’t sound practical.
HoCP: But how are people to guess this is a train-station water cistern, if it doesn’t carry an adequate sense of doom and heavy foreboding?
CA: Well, there are a few things we can do…
HoCP: listening…
CA: We could make the tower really ominous and lugubrious, like something out of a Tolkien novel. Make it entirely black. But not some sleek shiny black: we go for suffocating, light-absorbing, black-as-coal black. Something that would look great against our typical backdrop of sunless gray skies…
HoCP: Keep going, I like what I’m hearing…
CA: Shape-wise, I was thinking we’d go for a martial theme: dangerous and uninviting, military without the reassuring overtones… a pointy prussian helmet, maybe?
HoCP: That sounds awesome! And so appropriate for a building that will define the landscape of the neighbourhood. When can you start?
CA: The wheels are already in motion, sir…
HoCP: Beautiful, beautiful… [strokes mean-looking white Persian cat while adjusting glass eye] Everything is going according to the plan…
[both erupts in evil laughters]
I’m not saying this is how it happened.
But you’ll have to agree there’s a strong possibility.
Fuck me, I can finally leave a comment, that took far too long. Do you get that much spam. Anyway… Where was I now lost all my passion. Erm, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’ve always wondered about that building. We call it Darth Vaders holiday home.
@enjoycoca: you have no idea… Sorry about the inconvenience and sorry that it cut your inspiration short.
Many friends are even less poetic and simply call it the Giant Penis.