Harrods Depository Riverside Warehouse To East

The following should be added:

TQ 27 NW ARUNDEL TERRACE

2/4 Harrods Depository Riverside Warehouse to east

• II

Depository. 1911 - c.1914 by W G Hunt for Harrods Stores. Kahn system reinforced concrete with terracotta east facade (facing river) and flat roof. Wedge-shaped plan. Elaborate Baroque-style facade has keyed architraves to tripartite windows, flight of 15 steps flanked by bronze uplighters to round-arched projecting porch and pedimented end bays surmounted by cupolas. Eight-bay projection to south with additional projecting end bay, part of original composition, completed in slightly simpler form c.1914; similar wing to north never built. Rear elevation has access galleries on reinforced concrete cantilvers to either side of projecting lift shaft. Interior: fine Baroque-style entrance hall clad in Carrara marble, with swags to pilasters and coffered ceiling supported on brackets; offices to right with mahogany doors and half-glazed partitions. Symmetrical composition of warehouse spaces have octagonal columns and closely-spaced beams, arched at column tops. Recommended as a remarkably pure and unaltered early example of the Kahn system of reinforced concrete, invented by Julius Kahn in 1903 and widely used in the car factories of Detroit by his brother Albert. The use of cantilevers make this a particularly important example, whilst the terracotta facade is impressive in its own right. (The builder, 13 June 1913, pp 683-5)

Listing NGR: TQ2311377669