Marks And Spencers, British Home Stores And The Roof Garden

Marks and Spencers, British Home Stores and The Roof Garden

Former departmental store with roof garden, now subdivided into stores, offices and roof garden. Built in 1933 to designs by architect Bernard George, with floor layouts prepared by CA Wheeler of Chicago. The roof garden opened in 1938 under the overall supervision of Bernard Jones. The building is designed in the Art Deco style.

The main structure is steel-framed, with Portland stone cladding to the front and sides featuring bronze glazing bars and shopfront. The rear is constructed of brick in Flemish bond with Portland stone dressings. The facade is symmetrical, comprising seven storeys and a basement arranged in nine bays (2:5:2 pattern), divided by staircase bays. The seventh floor is set back and carries six flagpoles. Between the first and fourth storeys, fluted pilasters rise between the windows. Above these sits an entablature, with the top storey treated as a frieze containing sculptured metopes depicting productive labour. Openwork metal grilles over the windows feature figures representing the signs of the zodiac, created by Walter Gilbert. The openwork grilles to the staircases incorporate stone panels with floral designs and the initials DT (Derry and Toms). Windows throughout are casements with small bronze panes, set between Art Deco bronze panels. Above the first floor are splayed balconettes with carved stone floral motif panels. Two entrances positioned beneath the staircase bays are sheltered by bronze-trimmed canopies. The shopfronts are largely late twentieth-century replacements, though some original bronze panels survive.

The elevation to Derry Street follows a similar style, arranged in 6:4 bays and divided by a staircase bay.

The interior retains original Art Deco decoration in the fifth-floor Rainbow Room, originally a restaurant, which features an oval glazed ceiling dome and columns.

The roof garden comprises several distinct garden areas. A one-storey sun pavilion, subject to late twentieth-century extension and refenestration, stands at its centre. The Spanish Garden contains a concrete pergola with twisted columns, a two-storey facade in Spanish style with a pantile roof and metal balconies, a panelled door, a concrete octagonal fountain base, and flowerbed edging with tiles. The Tudor garden retains its circa 1938 four-centred stone arches, brick walls, and concrete sculptured panels. The Woodland Garden includes a stone bridge of three round-headed arches with keystones and a Japanese wooden bridge of single-arch construction.

Derry and Toms was among the first London stores to adopt the American horizontal planning system, in which each floor was designed as open as possible. Fire safety was ensured by keeping floors wholly separate without well holes or central staircases. A seventh floor was originally planned but proved impossible to construct, as fire engine ladders of the period could only reach six storeys. A roof garden was built instead. Although Selfridges and Barkers already possessed roof gardens, the Derry and Toms roof garden was designed to surpass them. When built, it was the largest roof garden in the world and remains the largest roof garden in Europe.