 The "nostalgic affection" felt by the city's population towards the structure, and the difficulty of demolishing or removing it without great expense, have ensured its survival despite demands (occasionally vociferous) for its destruction.Criticism by architectural historians has sometimes been intense, although others have praised the tower.Nikolaus Pevsner and Ian Nairn dismissed it as "worthless", and it has been likened to "a giant salt-cellar"; but its idiosyncratic appeal has prompted descriptions such as "charmingly ugly" and "extremely charming and delightful", and the most recent academic study of the city's architecture acclaimed it as "supremely confident and showy".