House of Deco

We are not in the mood for lengthy or deep analysis of the state of the world, or even the parish, here at the moment, so we fall back on some nice pictures to show you. A trip to London on Thursday found me sat on a stone bench on Oxford Street waiting for my friend to arrive, and wondering whether I'd really never been there before. Otherwise, how could I have failed to notice the grandiose frontage of the House of Fraser store, built in 1937 when it was DH Evans? More details about the architecture and some wonderful images from the store's opening brochure can be found here. 

I sometimes complain that modern buildings don't have the style of their confident 1930s counterparts, but just round the corner we find 50 Bond Street, now a Mulberry store but apparently built in 2012 for Scottish Widows. Those angular pilasters (if that's an accurate term in this case) are very striking, as is the decision to front the building in green stone. No wonder it won a RIBA award.