Architecture

Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.

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Daily Express Building

Black glass and chrome on Fleet Street, with a lobby that has to be seen to be believed.

Art Deco

Photo by Russ London -- ( Russ London ), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Ellis and Clarke designed it in 1932 for the Daily Express, and the front is a sheet of black vitrolite and clear glass with rounded corners and chromium strips - Streamline Moderne, and startling on a street of stone. Behind the skin is a stacked reinforced-concrete portal frame by Sir Owen Williams, the engineer, which is half the reason for the building's protected status. The lobby by Robert Atkinson is the part people talk about: plaster reliefs by Eric Aumonier, silver and gilt everywhere, an oval staircase and a silvered pendant lamp, all of it done for a newspaper. The presses left Fleet Street in the 1980s; the building was restored in 2000 and the lobby is visible from the pavement.

Where
120 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BE
Nearest station
City Thameslink · 2 min walk

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