Thursday, February 24, 2011

The OXO Tower, London

The building was originally constructed as a power station for the Post Office, built towards the end of the 19th century. It was subsequently acquired by the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, manufacturers of Oxo beef stock cubes, for conversion into a cold store.
The building was largely rebuilt to an Art Deco design by company architect Albert Moore between 1928 and 1929. Much of the original power station was demolished, but the river facing facade was retained and extended. Liebig wanted to include a tower featuring illuminated signs advertising the name of their product. When permission for the advertisements was refused, the tower was built with four sets of three vertically-aligned windows, each of which "coincidentally" happened to be in the shapes of a circle, a cross and a circle.

Photograph by curry15 @ Flickr
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2 comments:

  1. Bruce Partington-PlansFebruary 24, 2011 at 6:47 AM

    I worked near the OXO Tower between 2001 and 2006. A great building, useful landmark and sits nicely in the area, which has come on in leaps and bounds in the last couple of decades.

    Good post; some things in there I didn't know about it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lord KFebruary 24, 2011 at 6:49 AM

    My pleasure, Bruce.

    ReplyDelete