Power to the People: The Rise of the Electricity Showroom

Showrooms & Offices, Westminster Electric Supply Co,Victoria Street (1933) Maxwell Fry. Image from RIBApix

In 1925 the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority was formed to oversee the generation and supply of electricity in the capital. The use of electricity in domestic settings had started in the late 19th century, and grown in the first two decades of the 20th. Local power companies were formed and used small power stations to generate electricity for their local area. By 1910, 65 different private companies or local authorities supplied power in London, generated from around 70 small power stations. The new authority aimed to bring this all under one body. This new organisation was made up of 36 members, including the London Power Company, which brought another 10 power companies from west London, and the local authority companies, mainly from the east of the city. 

Although a number had existed before this amalgamation, from 1925 the use of the electricity showroom was expanded across the city, with one found in most high streets, and at other locations. These showrooms sought to promote the use of domestic appliances that used electricity, as well as electric lighting and heating. Early showrooms were fitted into existing shop parades, but as art deco and modernism began to make its mark on the British consciousness, these styles were employed to denote the futuristic application of domestic electricity.

Strand Building,Clapton (1925) J.A. Bowden

The most renowned architect of the electricity showroom was Maxwell Fry, who designed a number of showrooms in the mid 1930s. Whereas early buildings specifically built to promote and demonstrate the use of electricity, like the Strand Building in Clapton (1925, J.A. Bowden) or Electric House, Bow Road (1925, Harry Heckford), used Classical or Neo-Georgian dressings, Fry’s showrooms utilized lightweight steel, plate glass and vitrolite. His first showroom in Victoria Street featured a streamlined entrance in metal-faced plywood with a neon name sign and was decorated inside with photomurals by designer Hazen Sise. Fry then redesigned a shop for the Chelsea Electricity Supply company in Sloane Street in 1936, adding a neon sign and large windows to the exterior.

Mortimer Gall Electrical Centre, Cannon Street (1937) Maxwell Fry and Walter Gropius. Image from RIBApix.

Fry designed two more showrooms; the Mortimer Gall Electrical Centre in Cannon Street (1937) and the Regent Street showrooms for the Central London Electricity Company (1938). The Cannon Street showrooms were designed when Fry was still in partnership with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, during the German’s brief stay in England. Like the Sloane Street design, it fits new wine into an old bottle, adding a shopfront in curved glass, black vitrolite and glass brick to an existing building. In Regent Street, Fry designed premises with a spectacular interior featuring a spiral metal staircase and a photographic display by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, which showed the story of electrical production and supply.

Showrooms, Central London Electricity Company, Regent Street (1938) Maxwell Fry . Image from RIBApix

Elsewhere in the city and its suburbs were a number of other showrooms using art deco and modernism to make the case for the electric age. In the north west suburb of Willesden, the local architects department designed and built Electric House (the name given to many electricity showrooms) in 1937. The three storey building occupied a prominent corner site and featured a rounded staircase tower and finished inside with travertine terrazzo, maple wood flooring and oblong light fittings, Unfortunately the building was demolished in 2014. A little further to the east is Hornsey Town Hall, opened in 1935 and designed by Reginald H. Uren. The town hall is flanked by two sets of showrooms, an electricity one by Uren (1938), and one for gas appliances by Dawe and Carter (1937). Both ranges were built in the same sober brick idiom as the civic buildings, but the gas showrooms feature curved windows and a series of stone reliefs by A.J. Ayres, who also contributed a brick relief to the electric side. The town hall and the two showrooms are all listed by Historic England. 

Electric House, Willesden (1937) F. Wayman Brown, F. Wilkinson and Percy Johnson-Marshall. Image from RIBApix.

In nearby Wood Green are the showrooms and offices of the North Metropolitan Electric Power Supply Company, from 1930. In profile the building isn't as modernist as those in Willesden or Hornsey with its pitched roof, but it does have some lovely art deco detailing with underground style roundels across the exterior proclaiming ‘lighting’, ‘heating’, ‘cooking’ and ‘power’. In a similar mode are the former Gas Light and Coke showrooms in Edgware, designed by Welch, Cachemaille-Day and Lander in 1937. The showrooms were fitted into an existing Neo-Georgian parade, but the partnership added deco details such as chunky name signs, streamlined lighting and doors with half moon windows. Those moderne details are now gone, and the shop is now a Starbucks. 

Gas Light & Coke Showrroms, Leytonstone (1937) G.Grey Wornum. Image from RIBApix.

The eastern suburbs largely had their electricity and gas supplied by municipal companies but they also built a large number of showrooms to promote the new power sources. In Leytonstone are the former Gas showrooms at 678 Leytonstone High Road, designed by esteemed architect George Grey Wornum, who fitted out the interior with relief lettering spelling out Gas Light & Coke, now long gone. The Neo-Georgian ground floor of the 1934 library around the corner was home to the electricity showrooms. Electricity offices for East Ham Borough were designed by N.F. Cachemaille-Day who added a frontage in black terrazzo and glass with bronze detailing, now demolished. One former showroom which still exists is that for Ilford, on the junction of the HIgh Road and Clark’s Road. Designed in 1931 by borough architect L.E.J. Reynolds, the building has a nice deco styled corner entrance and windows with metal reliefs on the first floor. 

Electricity offices for East Ham Borough, by N.F. Cachmaille Day.

Moving around the compass to the south, amidst the high rises of Croydon we find the Electricity showrooms and offices on Wellesley Road by Robert Atkinson, built between 1939-42. Like the Ilford building, it sits on a corner plot, although it is much larger and grander in scale, finished in Portland stone and featuring double height windows along the street level. Just along from this building are the moderne, former Segas Offices (1939-41), designed by William Newton for the Croydon Gas and Coke Company. Both buildings are listed, but the electricity office is in much better shape these days. 

Segas Offices, Croydon (1939-41) William Newton

Completing our journey in the south western reaches we find a pair of buildings featuring the work of architect J.E. Franck and artist Percy George Bentham. On York Street in Twickenham is the South Eastern Electricity Board Building, designed by Franck with stone relief by Bentham. The building again occupies a prominent corner site and is made more conspicuous by its art deco style clocktower, reminiscent of a bypass factory of the age. The work of the pair can also be found on a much smaller scale on Portsmouth Road in Kingston upon Thames (1935), where we find a substation, compact in size but still featuring the stylized light bulb and lightning bolts above the doorway by Bentham. 

Electricity and gas showrooms continued to be a fixture of the high street after World War II, but the stylized deco details gave way to a more austere modernist palette. Soon even the later buildings disappeared, although some have (just about) survived such as former London Electricity Board showrooms and offices on Cambridge Heath Road (1959) by Watson & Coates. As you can see from this blog the novelty of domestic electricity may have faded but some pieces of the Electric Age still remain.