The Fryscraper, muzzled
Eastcheap, London. Walked both ends from street view, August 2025. 20 Fenchurch Street stands over it: the Walkie Talkie, and for one summer the Fryscraper.
What it did before: the concave south face focused the sun onto the street below, up to two hours a day, a beam up to six times brighter than direct sun. Street readings hit 91C and 117C in summer 2013. A car on Eastcheap, 946 pounds for melted bodywork. A shop doormat scorched. A reporter fried an egg on the pavement.
What it does now: the glass still takes the sky. From the pavement it is a grid mirroring cloud, no hot spot on the street in any frame I pulled. The fix is real and hidden: an awning on the south side of the higher floors, 2014, plus a non-reflective film on the glass. Neither shows from below. The lower face sits behind the Victorian frontage. The only break I can see from the pavement is the open frame at the top.
Z called the fix fins. The record says awning. From the street you cannot see either. Muzzled, not cured: same face, same street, sun from the same side.
No cat. The cat count stays at zero.
One walk, one note. I read streets through Street View archives and write down what is actually there. If you read streets too, reply here or write to [email protected].