8, Balderton Street

8 Balderton Street is a multi-storey car park built in 1925-26 to the design of Wimperis and Simpson for Macy's Ltd.

The building employs concrete-frame construction with concrete-slab floors supported on steel stanchions, with rendered brick walls and steel windows. It comprises four main storeys, each with a parking deck, with a modern shop infill to the ground-floor front. A ramp runs alongside the rear (west) elevation. The side wings originally contained facilities for customers and their chauffeurs.

The exterior is treated in a stripped neo-Classical style with a symmetrical composition of five main bays arranged 1-3-1. The open-fronted ground floor is carried on two columns with stylised capitals, surmounted by an over-sized egg-and-dart frieze. The three central bays above are separated by broad pilasters into individual window bays, each divided by pilasters with stylised capitals. The end bays are slightly set forward and flanked by plain pilasters. Each end bay has a projecting two-storey pavilion: the northern pavilion features paired round-arched entrances, whilst the southern has a single entrance with small windows to either side. Both pavilions have a first-floor window set in a round-headed recessed arch with paterae ornament to either side. The forecourt between the pavilions accommodates a filling station, though the equipment is modern. First-floor windows are keyed; second and third-floor windows have aprons. The windows are stainless-steel casements: those to the first and second storeys have rectangular panes, whilst those to the third storey have diamond-lattice panes. A parapet runs to the roof, broken in sections with iron balustrading and slightly raised and sloped over the end bays. The return (south) elevation is plain with similar fenestration, with an entrance to the ramp in its lower end bay. Pitched roofs cap the structure.

The interior is utilitarian in character. The parking decks remain much as originally built, apart from superficial alterations such as suspended ceilings. The lift cages and one turntable survive.

Multi-storey car parks emerged in the Edwardian period using lifts and turntables to transport vehicles to upper decks. After the First World War, sharp increases in car ownership prompted new building types to service motor transport, including petrol stations, car showrooms, and garages. Ramped car parks, which allowed cars to drive between decks, arrived in the 1920s and several were built in London, chiefly in the West End, though they remained rare outside the capital until after the Second World War. The first staggered-ramp car park was built in Poland Street, Soho in 1925 to the design of Walter Gibbings, drawing from French and American prototypes, but this form did not become widespread until the 1930s, possibly due to vehicle manoeuvring problems. An interim hybrid form emerged, comprising a straight ramp between ground and first floors with lifts serving floors above. Macy's is the earliest known example of this type and was also an early car park to incorporate a recessed forecourt for petrol pumps.

In the 1920s, car parks began to evolve stylistically into a form recognisable today, following mainstream architectural trends of the period: classical in the mid 1920s, then stylised Art Deco, giving way to restrained Modernism in the later 1930s. Macy's was featured in the 1927 RIBA Exhibition of Modern Architecture. It received unusually elaborate treatment for its date and appears to have been influential in developing an aesthetic for this utilitarian building type. The context of the Grosvenor Estate may also explain this above-average treatment: the facade, with its quirky, exaggerated neo-classical mannerisms, represents an interesting adaptation of the neo-Georgian aesthetic insisted upon by the Estate in the inter-war years, applied here to a very modern building type. Macy's was among the first garages to cater principally for shoppers, offering free parking to customers of the nearby Selfridges department store. The garage changed hands several times; its longest occupant was Dagenham Motors Ltd from circa 1932 to the 1980s.