MarkKelleher

By MarkKelleher

Peter Jones Department Store, King's Road, London

Peter Jones was the son of a Welsh hat maker. At 24, in 1867, he moved to London to be a draper (cloth seller). Two years later he set up a small shop in Marylebone Lane, and six years after that, at aged 32, he moved into a shop on the present site at 4 & 6 King's Road. He was so successful that he gradually took over the whole block.

Jones died in 1905 and his business was bought by the owner of a very successful Oxford Street shop - John Lewis.

The current building was built in 1936 and designed by William Crabtree, it is the first modernist use of a 'glass curtain wall' in Britain. That's where the outer skin of a building is not structural, but the place is held up by the floors and columns inside the building - now it is a very common technique.

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