Harrods Depository Riverside Warehouse To East

Harrods Depository Riverside Warehouse, built between 1911 and around 1914 by W G Hunt for Harrods Stores, is a depository constructed using the Kahn system of reinforced concrete, featuring a terracotta facade facing the river and a flat roof. The building has a wedge-shaped plan and an elaborate Baroque-style facade, which includes keyed architraves to tripartite windows, a flight of 15 steps flanked by bronze uplighters leading to a round-arched projecting porch, and pedimented end bays topped with cupolas. There is an eight-bay projection to the south, with an additional projecting end bay that is part of the original design, completed in a slightly simpler style around 1914; a similar wing to the north was never built. The rear elevation features access galleries on reinforced concrete cantilevers on either side of a projecting lift shaft.

Inside, the building boasts a fine Baroque-style entrance hall clad in Carrara marble, with decorative swags on the pilasters and a coffered ceiling supported by brackets. Offices to the right have mahogany doors and half-glazed partitions. The warehouse spaces are symmetrically arranged with octagonal columns and closely spaced beams that are arched at the tops of the columns. This building is recommended as a remarkably pure and unaltered early example of the Kahn system of reinforced concrete, which was invented by Julius Kahn in 1903 and widely used in Detroit's car factories by his brother Albert. The use of cantilevers adds to its significance, while the terracotta facade is impressive in its own right.