A while ago I pulled together this collection of shops that still retain horizontal curved glass. I mused that there must have been other businesses making use of this innovative non-reflective window design and an anonymous contributor sent me a link to the image below at 363 HMV Oxford Street which clearly shows that the shop also had curved windows – look closely where the two men are looking into the windows on the left side and you'll make out some horizontal lines:
What a lovely image. HMV (The Gramophone Company) opened a shop here in 1921, but I suspect this façade was installed a few years later – perhaps someone can enlighten me as to the age of that vehicle.
As the wording across the store shows, they sold a variety goods, no doubt displayed on beautiful chromed and polished counters. The shop interior has since been pulled apart, indeed gutted, but the elegant Vitrolite and glass brick exterior has survived virtually intact above street level. In 2018 the shop looked like this (here follows a series of screen grabs from googlemaps):
By 2012, with the demise of CD and DVD sales, HMV had left the building and Foot Locker moved in removing the neon letters 'HIS MASTER'S VOICE' and the iconic image of little Nipper the dog listening to a wind-up gramophone player :
HMV's signage was reinstated in 2013 when the record company returned to the site and reinstalled their branding. Here is it in until 2014 showing the neon around the dog:
But it was all gone again by 2022 when, for a short while, it became home to a US candy outlet. In November 2023 I was walking past and happened to notice that the interior was empty apart from a team of shop fitters busy with ladders and power tools. Posters across exterior at street level announced that HMV was coming back. Whoopee!
My photo above shows that a new sign was partially in place. I hoped that Nipper and the old neon letters had been saved and would be somehow be reinstalled as part of the design. Nope. Here it is this year, and they've even covered up their own building this time with something that looks horribly cheap and temporary:
An opportunity missed. I'm disappointed to say the least. Oh well. Let's get back to the street level window glass... here's that marvelous old black and white pic again...
I wondered if there was any more visual reference from the pre-WW2 years and found this next pic on RIBA's site here which clearly shows curved glass.
RIBA has captioned and credited this image as 363 Oxford Street, but I am very doubtful that this is the same location because, comparing the first image with this one two images, it's clear that the façade is different – the large open plate glass windows on the upper floor rather than glass bricks, no flat areas of black Vitrolite, and the arrangement of street level windows is shown to be flush with the street rather than angled as in the first pic. I therefore deduce that RIBA's image is a totally different HMV store. It could be another large central London store, but might be somewhere else in the country. Any ideas?
Another thing of interest on the 363 Oxford Street store is this plaque commemorating Sir George Martin and The Beatles: