Carreras Cigarette Factory

Coordinates: 51°32′01″N 0°08′23″W / 51.5335°N 0.1398°W / 51.5335; -0.1398
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Carreras Factory
ASOS.com, Wunderman Thompson, WPP, Radley & Co and others
Construction started1926
Completed1928
Renovated1996
Design and construction
Architect(s)M. E. Collins, O. H. Collins & A. G. Porri
Renovating team
Renovating firmFinch Forman
Awards and prizesCivic Trust Award

The Carreras Cigarette Factory is a large

Mornington Crescent
, to a design by architects M. E. and O. H. Collins and A. G. Porri. It is 550 feet (168 metres) long, and is mainly white.

The building's distinctive Egyptian-style ornamentation originally included a solar disc to the Sun-god Ra, two gigantic effigies of black cats flanking the entrance and colourful painted details. When the factory was converted into offices in 1961 the Egyptian detailing was lost, but it was restored during a renovation in the late 1990s, and replicas of the cats were placed outside the entrance.[1]

The building is located at the northern end of

Hampstead Road and faces out over Harrington Square
.

History

As demand for

cigarettes increased during the First World War, the Carreras Tobacco Company expanded its business in the 1920s, like many other tobacco companies. Carreras had outgrown its Arcadia cigarette factory in City Road
, London, so it closed the facility and opened a new Arcadia Works in 1928 in Mornington Crescent, Camden.

Statue of Bastet (664–342 BC)

The architects of the Camden Arcadia Works were

Paris Exhibition of 1925, as well as various spectacular Hollywood portrayals of Ancient Egypt.[3] Collins, Collins and Porri additionally drew inspiration from the displays at the British Museum. Commentators on the architecture have also speculated that the use of Egyptian decoration was used to create an association of the "luxury" image of smoking with the treasures of Ancient Egypt.[4]

Furthermore, between the 1880s and the end of World War 1, the Egyptian cigarette industry was a globally successful manufacturer and exporter of cigarettes. Non-Egyptian tobacco companies adopted Egyptian motifs in their advertising to take advantage of this, although the Egyptian industry had begun to decline by the late 1920s as popular taste shifted away from the Turkish tobacco it used.

The building was opened to great fanfare; a ceremony held in front of the building involved covering the pavements in front of the building with sand to replicate the deserts of Egypt. There was a procession of cast members from a contemporary London production of

Hampstead Road.[4]

The Craven A black cat brand

Dominating the entrance to the building were two large 8.5-foot (2.6 m)-high bronze statues of cats, stylised versions of the Egyptian god Bastet (or Bubastis, or Bast), which had been cast at the Haskins Foundry in London. The image of a black cat was a branding device which Carreras used on the packets of their Craven A range of cigarettes.[4] The building had thus been conceived as a "temple" to Bastet, and the architects' original drawings reveal that it was to be named Bast House (the name was dropped due to unfortunate similarities to derogatory words in English).[5]

The cats stood guard over Arcadia Works until 1959 when Carreras merged with Rothmans of Pall Mall and moved to a new factory in Basildon, Essex. The cats were removed from the building and separated; one was transported to Essex to stand at the Basildon works, the other exported to Jamaica to stand outside the Carreras factory in Spanish Town.

In 1960–62, the Camden Arcadia Works were converted into offices. The building was refurbished and stripped of all its Egyptian decoration, which was now out of fashion, in an attempt to give it a simpler, more

Modernist appearance. At this time, it was renamed Greater London House.[4][6]

In 1996, the building was purchased by Resolution GLH who commissioned architects Finch Forman to restore the building to its former glory. The restorers consulted the original designs and aimed to recreate 80-90% of the original Art Deco features, including installing replicas of the famous cat statues. The restoration work won a Civic Trust Award.[4]

Architecture

The Carreras Cigarette Factory was faced in Atlas White

hieroglyphs.[4]

The building was the first factory in Britain to make use of

pre-stressed concrete technology, the first to contain air conditioning
and a dust extraction plant.

  • Columns at the tomb of Panehesy (c.1330 BC)
    Columns at the tomb of Panehesy (c.1330 BC)
  • The ornate Egyptian colonnade(restored)
    The ornate Egyptian colonnade(restored)
  • The cat motifs on the façade
    The cat motifs on the façade
  • The front seen from the south
    The front seen from the south

The building today

Greater London House today houses offices for

ASOS.com, the British Heart Foundation, Wunderman Thompson, WPP, Revlon Radley + Co. The building features in the BBC comedy television series W1A
as the offices of Fun Media.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Carreras Cigarette Factory". Art Deco buildings in London. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
  2. ISBN 978-0-465-01525-2
    .
  3. ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus; Cherry, Bridget (1999). Buildings of England Volume 48: London 4: North. Penguin Books. p. 69.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84472-006-4
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-415-36118-7
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-7112-2918-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carreras_Cigarette_Factory&oldid=1195961489"