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Selfridges is the largest department store on Oxford Street. It was one of the
first buildings in the country to use the steel frame construction which is
standard today. The steel frame is disguised behind the huge masonry columns
(1) Selfridges was built in stages. The main entrance (3) and all of the
building to the left were added some 18 years after the store first opened. |
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Some of London's most imaginative displays can be seen in Selfridges windows
(2), especially at Christmas. Once, one million pounds worth of diamonds were
put on show. |
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Above the Art-Deco main entrance (3) there is a statue to the Queen of Time
riding in her Ship of Commerce (4) Harry Selfridge, the American founder,
wanted retailing to be seen as a more noble pursuit than simply buying and
selling for profit, and even wrote a book called 'The Romance of Commerce'
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Selfridges has a reputation for crowd-pulling events. One of the first was in
1909, when after the first cross-Channel flight, Louis Blériot's tiny
damaged aeroplane was repaired and exhibited at Selfridges bringing thousands
of people through the doors.
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The first public demonstration of television was made on the first floor at
Selfridges (5) in 1925 by the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird. |
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While restoration work was carried out on the building in 2002, the scaffolding
around the building was used to carry the largest photographic artwork ever
produced, 60ft tall by 900ft long and weighing 2 tons. It showed a gathering of
well-known pop and cultural figures of the time. |
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Selfridges website can be found
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