Former Oxford Corner House

Former Oxford Corner House

A former Lyons Corner House restaurant built in 1926-7 to the design of FJ Wills, house architect of J Lyons and Co. The building has a steel-frame construction faced in white faience called "Burmantoft's Marmo" by the Leeds Fireclay Company, with the rear elevation in brown brick.

The building has an irregular footprint wrapping around the corner block of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, presenting three elevations: the principal entrance on Oxford Street to the south, a second elevation on Tottenham Court Road to the east, and a third to Hanway Street to the north. As originally built, the plan comprised a ground-floor food hall and restaurants in the basement, ground and first floors. This original plan no longer survives.

The south and east elevations are grandly designed in a complementary Beaux-Arts classical style with richly-moulded faience detailing and decorative metalwork.

The south elevation comprises three storeys plus an attic storey, arranged in five bays. The ground floor has modern shop fronts, though the main structure survives, with three bays comprising a broad central bay flanked by smaller ones and separated by piers. Above this, the façade is largely unaltered, retaining original metal-framed casement windows. The outer bays of the first and second floors break forward slightly with windows set in full-height panels. The tall first-floor windows are surmounted by cornices, with decorative panels above the casements. The central first-floor window sits within an aedicule featuring fluted columns and a segmental pediment broken by an elaborate cartouche flanked by torches. The second floor has a central winged cartouche. Above the second floor is a frieze-cum-loggia, in front of which stands a scrolled metal grille that originally bore the name 'Corner House' and features three ornate coloured panels in the form of stylised bouquets. Above this is a deep modillion cornice. The stepped attic storey contains a central Diocletian window and a metal grille with a reticulated pattern.

The east elevation has an altered ground-floor shop front. Above this level, the treatment is similar to the south elevation but consists of three storeys and three bays, articulated by full-height narrow panelled pilasters with stylised capitals. The central first-floor bay here is tripartite, with fluted columns and a triangular pediment broken by a cartouche with festoons and garlands. The second floor has a recessed balcony with a metal balustrade decorated with a bouquet motif; the unglazed openings to the outer windows have similar decorative treatment. The frieze has a central cartouche with urns. A stepped parapet with a recessed central bay completes this elevation.

The north elevation is in a complementary classical style in brown brick but is not of special interest.

The interior was reconstructed in 1993-5 and is not of special interest. Although some art-deco features were reputed to survive before the refurbishment, there is little visible evidence of this. The interior bears no resemblance to its original form.

J Lyons and Co was established in 1889 by Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, Barnett Salmon and Joseph Lyons, becoming one of the largest catering and food manufacturing companies in the world. The first Lyons teashop opened in London at 213 Piccadilly in 1894; by 1900, 37 teashops had been opened in London plus 15 elsewhere, the forerunners of some 250 premises nationally, all bearing their familiar white and gold signage. The company also catered at the top end of the market, building the exclusive Trocadero restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue in 1896, but their success lay in identifying a major market niche arising from the scarcity of mass catering in London. Hitherto, eating out in the West End had been confined either to expensive restaurants or downmarket chop houses and taverns. The Joe Lyons Corner Houses and teashops, with their uniformed waitresses known as 'Nippies', became synonymous with good-quality food at reasonable prices combined with rigorous standards of service and hygiene, set in stylish and opulent surroundings. Respectable clients of modest means—notably the growing number of office employees, including increasing numbers of single women, and suburban housewives on shopping trips—could lunch, take tea or dine in comfort. All-night cafés also operated. Set out across several floors with a ground-floor food hall, they boasted vast dining rooms, each decorated in a different style. Customers were entertained by light orchestras (the company had its own orchestra department) and sometimes by flamenco dancers or 'Gipsy' bands. The buildings also contained hair salons, theatre booking agencies and food delivery services. Lyons Tea, from the company's own estates in Nyasaland, was said to be the best available. All this was supported by a highly-organised factory system in and outside London. After the Second World War, Lyons began new ventures including Steak Houses and Wimpy Bars, but changing eating habits led to the company's decline. It was sold to Allied Breweries in 1978.

The first Corner House was built in 1909 in Coventry Street and extended by Wills in 1921-3; the second, in the Strand, is now demolished. The Oxford was the third. There were also two 'Maison Lyons', virtually identical to corner houses but under a different management structure, at Shaftesbury Avenue (1915) and Marble Arch (1933). The latter, along with the three Corner Houses, became known as 'the four Corners of London'; 'meet me at the Corner House' was a household phrase.

The Oxford Corner House occupied the site of the Oxford Music Hall. It boasted a ground-floor food hall and restaurants at basement, ground and first floor, a spectacular staircase and lavish restaurant interiors designed by Oliver Bernard. Over 550 tons of different coloured marble are said to have been used; the most remarkable feature was a series of 20-foot-high marble murals depicting mountains, trees and waterfalls. In the 1950s the building was altered and subdivided. In 1967 it was sold to Mecca Leisure and became the Virgin Megastore in the 1980s, following which the interior was radically altered.