ART DECO ARCHITECTURE IN LONDON: WHERE TO SEE IT AND WHAT TO LOOK FOR

London never built an Art Deco skyscraper, and for a long time that was taken to mean London never really did Art Deco. The opposite is true. The capital has more interwar Deco than any city in Europe — it simply put it where the money was in the 1930s: on the factories along the new arterial roads, in the cinemas of the suburbs, on the black-glass fronts of Fleet Street, in the department stores of Kensington and the hotel bars of Mayfair. Much of it is still there, most of it is listed, and a surprising amount of it you can walk into. This page is a guide to seeing it, grouped by area, with a note on what to look for at each.

For the style itself — where it came from, what defines it, and how it differs from Art Nouveau and from Modernism — see our guide to Art Deco architecture. This page assumes you already like it and want to go and look.

  • Written by Gavin Paisley, director & model-maker at Chisel & Mouse based in Sussex, England.
  • Last updated: 4-Nov-26.

Our London Art Deco models

Thirteen of the buildings on this page are available as handcrafted plaster models: the Hoover Building, Battersea Power Station, Broadcasting House, RIBA 66 Portland Place, Michelin House, the Oxo Tower (and as a PopArc), the Carreras Factory, Arsenal Stadium, Abbey House, the Firestone Building, and the three Bromige cinemas — Acton Dominion, Harrow Dominion and the Rayners Lane Grosvenor. See the full Art Deco collection

Why London?

Three things made London's Deco what it is. The 1930s were a boom decade for the capital even as the north struggled: new light industry — vacuum cleaners, tyres, cigarettes, cosmetics — needed factories, and built them as advertisements along the new bypasses. The cinema was the mass entertainment of the age, and the chains competed in faience and neon. And London's money, old and new, wanted the modern look without the modernist ideology — so it bought Deco: a style that was glamorous, decorative and perfectly happy to sit on a classical plan.

The result is a city where the best Deco is rarely in the centre. It is on the A40 at Perivale, on the A4 at Brentford, in Harrow and Acton and Rayners Lane, in Eltham and Balham — and, in the centre, hidden in hotel foyers and behind department-store facades.

The arterial roads: factories as advertisements

Hoover Building — Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, 1933; canteen 1938. Grade II* listed (1980; Historic England 1079353). Western Avenue, Perivale; Perivale station (Central line).
The most famous Deco building in Britain and the one that proves the style could do industry. Thomas Wallis gave the Hoover Company's vacuum-cleaner factory an entrance like an Egyptian temple in coloured faience — green, red and blue against white — with fluted columns and a sunburst over the door, and set it on the A40 to be seen from every passing car. John Betjeman called its colours Aztec. The main block became flats in 2018; a supermarket occupies the factory floor behind; the gates, railings and canteen are listed separately. Exterior only, but the exterior is the point, and it is best in the afternoon from the far side of Western Avenue. Read our full Hoover Building guide

Photograph of Hoover Building by Ewan Munro, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Firestone Factory (site) — Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, 1928; demolished August 1980. Gates and piers Grade II listed (Historic England 1389664). Great West Road, Brentford; Boston Manor or Syon Lane.
The building that changed British conservation. Firestone's Egyptian-fronted tyre factory was bulldozed over the August bank holiday of 1980, two days before its listing took effect; the outcry led the government to open the lists to interwar buildings, and Hoover was listed within the year. What survives is the central gates, the piers and the railings on the A4, standing in front of a trading estate. Worth the pavement view for what they stand for. Read our Firestone guide

Fleet Street and the City: black glass and Egyptian bronze

Daily Express Building — Ellis and Clarke with Owen Williams, 1932; lobby by Robert Atkinson. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1064659). 120 Fleet Street; City Thameslink or Blackfriars.
Britain's finest Streamline Moderne façade: black Vitrolite glass and chrome strips, curved at the corners, with Atkinson's silver-and-gilt lobby — Eric Aumonier's reliefs of Britain and Empire — behind the doors. The building has been closed and under redevelopment for some years, with a public foyer and roof garden promised as part of the scheme; check before visiting. The exterior is always there.

Photograph of the Daily Express Building by Matt Brown, licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The West End: Portland Place, Mayfair and the hotels

Broadcasting House — G. Val Myer with Watson Hart, 1932. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1265570). Portland Place; Oxford Circus.
The BBC's ship of Portland stone, prow to Langham Place, with Eric Gill's Prospero and Ariel over the entrance and porthole windows in the attic. Historic England calls it mixed Modernist and Georgian; everyone else calls it Deco, and the sculpture settles it. Public tours have ended; the reception is closed to visitors; the exterior is the visit. Read our Broadcasting House guide

RIBA, 66 Portland Place — G. Grey Wornum, 1934. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1227026). Regent's Park or Great Portland Street.
The Royal Institute of British Architects' headquarters, won in competition in 1929 and opened by George V: Scandinavian-influenced classicism outside, with James Woodford's bronze doors, and a Deco interior of etched glass, marble and black-and-gold that is one of the best in London. Free entry to the exhibitions, café and bookshop in opening hours — the easiest great Deco interior in London to walk into. Read our RIBA guide

Abbey House — J. J. Joass, 1932. 219–229 Baker Street; Baker Street station.
The former Abbey Road Building Society headquarters: Portland stone with a lighthouse relief over the door and a clock tower. Substantially rebuilt as flats in the 2000s behind the retained façade and tower, so what you see is the front. Exterior only. Read our Abbey House guide

Palladium House (Ideal House) — Raymond Hood with Gordon Jeeves, 1929. Grade II listed (Historic England 1357168). Great Marlborough Street; Oxford Circus.
New York Deco in Soho: the architect of the Daily News Building clad a small office block in black granite with champlevé enamel friezes in gold, orange and green. Shops on the ground floor; the rest is the façade, which is the most un-English thing in the West End.

Photograph of Palladium House by Christopher Hilton, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Claridge's — Deco entrance, ballroom wing and restaurant by Oswald Milne, 1929–31; glass by Basil Ionides. Grade II listed (Historic England 1219905). Brook Street; Bond Street.
The best Deco interior in London you can sit down in. Milne's lobby and Ionides's engraved glass are open to anyone taking tea or a drink, with a dress code.

The Savoy — Savoy Court canopy by Howard Robertson, 1929. Grade II listed (Historic England 1236709). Strand; Charing Cross.
The stainless-steel canopy, the gilt SAVOY fascia and the American Bar: Deco grafted onto a Victorian hotel, and the only street in Britain where you drive on the right.

Shell Mex House — Messrs Joseph, 1931. Grade II listed (Historic England 1236752). 80 Strand; Embankment.
Stripped-classical Deco with the largest clock face in London in its stepped tower. Best seen from the Embankment or across the river.

Kensington and Chelsea: department stores and a tyre company

Michelin House — François Espinasse, 1911. Grade II listed (Historic England 1080656). 81 Fulham Road; South Kensington.
Fourteen years too early to be Art Deco and in every list anyway: a tyre company's showroom in Hennebique concrete, covered in tiles of racing cars, with glass cupolas like stacked tyres and Bibendum in stained glass. Art Nouveau going somewhere new. The tiled exterior is always visible; the restaurant that occupied it for decades closed in 2025, so check what's open before planning lunch. Read our Michelin House guide

Barkers — Bernard George, 1938. Grade II listed (Historic England 1222712). 63 Kensington High Street.
Twin stair towers with diagonal strip windows and glass lanterns — the department store as liner. Ground floor open as shops; the original escalator is in the listing.

Photograph of Barkers by Mahlum, in the public domain as per Wikimedia Commons.

Derry and Toms — Bernard George, 1933. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1222781). 99 Kensington High Street.
Walter Gilbert's zodiac grilles on the façade and, on the roof, the famous gardens of 1938 — Grade II registered in their own right, and since 2024 a members' club. Exterior and shops only.

The South Bank and Battersea

Oxo Tower — Albert Moore, 1929. Unlisted (conservation area). Bargehouse Street; Southwark or Blackfriars.
A meat company's warehouse, rebuilt with a tower whose windows spell O-X-O on three sides because illuminated advertising was banned on the river. Now flats, design studios and galleries with a free public viewing gallery on the eighth floor beside the restaurant — the best free view on the South Bank. Read our Oxo Tower guide

Photograph of the Oxo Tower by James Petts, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Battersea Power Station — J. Theo Halliday with Giles Gilbert Scott, 1933 (Station A) and 1955 (B). Grade II* listed (Historic England 1357620). Battersea Power Station station (Northern line).
Deco inside, cathedral outside. Scott's brick exterior is interwar monumentalism; Halliday's interiors — Control Room A in ribbed marble with its original Holophane fittings, Turbine Hall A in biscuit faience with fluted pilasters — are the finest Art Deco industrial interiors in Europe. Reopened as shops and flats in October 2022; free entry; Control Room A is now a bar, and Lift 109 takes you up a chimney. Read our Battersea Power Station guide

Camden and North London: cats and cannons

Carreras Cigarette Factory (Greater London House) — M. E. and O. H. Collins with A. G. Porri, 1928. Hampstead Road, Mornington Crescent.
The purest Egyptian Revival building in Britain, built six years after Tutankhamun: a temple front of papyrus columns and a solar-disc cornice, guarded by two bronze cats of Bastet. Stripped of all of it in the 1960s and restored in the 1990s, with replica cats. Offices; the forecourt and the cats are public. Read our Carreras guide

Arsenal Stadium, East Stand — Claude Ferrier and William Binnie, 1936. Grade II listed (Historic England 1119692). Avenell Road; Arsenal station.
The only listed Deco football stand in the country: a cream façade with the club's cannon over a black-marble entrance, built at a cost driven almost entirely by the front. Arsenal left in 2006 and the stands became the Highbury Square flats around a garden where the pitch was; a public path runs through, and the façade is intact. Read our Arsenal Stadium guide

Hornsey Town Hall — Reginald Uren, 1935. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1263688). Crouch End.
Not Deco — it is Dutch Modernism after Dudok's Hilversum — but it belongs in any interwar London itinerary and reopened in December 2025 as an arts centre and hotel with a public café.

Photograph of Hornsey Town Hall by Christine Matthews, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Holden's Underground stations — Charles Holden, 1932 onward. Piccadilly line: Arnos Grove, Southgate, Sudbury Town and others.
Also not Deco, strictly — Historic England calls Arnos Grove early-1930s Modernist — but the brick drums and glass boxes of the Piccadilly line extension are the best interwar public architecture in London and the easiest to visit, since they are stations. We make Sudbury Town and Mornington Crescent; read our London Underground architecture guide.

The cinemas: F. E. Bromige in the western suburbs

Britain's Deco arrived in the cinema, and London's suburbs have the best of it. Frederick Bromige, a Harrow architect, built three Streamline Moderne picture houses in 1936–37 that between them show the whole vocabulary, and we make all of them. Read our F. E. Bromige guide

Grosvenor Cinema, Rayners Lane — 1936. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1079729). Rayners Lane station.
The least altered late-1930s streamlined cinema in the country, according to its listing: a curved façade with a great concrete scroll — the "elephant's trunk" — over the entrance, and an oval foyer with a sunken tea room. Now the Zoroastrian Centre for Europe, which opens it for Open House and by arrangement. Read our guide

Dominion, Acton — 1937. Grade II listed (Historic England 1385098). High Street, Acton; Acton Town or Acton Central.
Twin curved glazed fins and a chromium-lit foyer; a bingo hall for decades, which is what kept it. Check whether it is trading before visiting. Read our guide

Dominion, Harrow — 1936. Unlisted. Station Road; Harrow-on-the-Hill.
The auditorium is gone, but the curved façade, hidden under cladding since the 1960s, was uncovered and restored in 2024–25 as the front of a block of flats — a rare case of a lost cinema giving its face back. Exterior only. Read our guide

Harrow Dominion Cinema black and white

Photograph by Ken Roe, licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Cinema Treasurers.

Outer London: the country house and the biggest block of flats

Eltham Palace — Seely and Paget, 1935, for Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. Grade II* listed (Historic England 1212906). Eltham or Mottingham; English Heritage, daily, admission charge.
The best Deco interior in Britain, and the one to make a day of: a 1930s millionaire's house grafted onto a medieval royal hall, with Rolf Engström's marquetry entrance hall under a glazed dome, Peter Malacrida's bedrooms, and a centrally heated cage for the Courtaulds' lemur.

Du Cane Court — G. Kay Green, 1937. Unlisted. Balham High Road; Balham.
Six hundred and seventy-seven flats in stepped brick — the largest private block in Europe when it was built, and still one of the most complete Moderne estates in the country. Private; exterior from the road.

Lost Art Deco London

Firestone is the famous loss. The Strand Palace Hotel's foyer — Oliver Bernard's chrome, marble and illuminated glass of 1930, the purest zigzag Deco interior London ever had — was dismantled in 1969 and given to the V&A, which keeps it in store. Dozens of Odeons went in the 1960s and 70s. The Harrow Dominion lost its auditorium. The Daily Express survives but has been closed to the public for years. The lesson of 1980 was learnt late and not everywhere.

Visiting: two routes

Central day, on foot and Tube: RIBA and Broadcasting House on Portland Place (free interior at RIBA) → Palladium House and Claridge's via Oxford Circus → Fleet Street for the Express and Telegraph fronts → Oxo Tower viewing gallery across Blackfriars Bridge → Battersea Power Station by Tube to finish, with a drink in Control Room A.

Western half-day, by Central and Piccadilly lines: Hoover Building at Perivale → Rayners Lane Grosvenor → Harrow Dominion façade → Acton Dominion, in that order; the Firestone gates at Brentford if you have a car. Eltham Palace is a separate half-day by train from Charing Cross or Victoria.

Blue Crow Media's Art Deco London Map, with an introduction by the Twentieth Century Society, covers seventy buildings and is the thing to carry; the Art Deco Society UK publishes free self-guided walks; Open House in September opens RIBA, the Zoroastrian Centre and others that are shut the rest of the year.

Model-maker's lens: London's Art Deco at small scale

Thirteen London Deco buildings is more than we make of any other city and style together, and it is no accident. Deco buildings were designed to be seen from the road as compositions — a factory front, a cinema façade, a tower with letters in it — and that is what a façade model is. The Hoover's entrance bay, the Oxo Tower's windows, the Grosvenor's scroll are complete at a few centimetres across.

Each is cast in plaster from a mould and finished by hand in our Sussex studio. Deco's ornament is in the geometry — fluting, steps, chevrons — so most of it survives reduction; the colour of the Hoover's faience and the bronze of the Carreras cats are the exceptions, suggested rather than reproduced. 

Frequently asked questions about Art Deco in London

What is the most famous Art Deco building in London?

The Hoover Building on Western Avenue, Perivale, is the best known — a 1933 factory with an Egyptian-style entrance in coloured faience, Grade II* listed. Battersea Power Station and the Daily Express Building on Fleet Street are the other Art Deco buildings in London that most people can name.

Where can I see Art Deco in London for free?

RIBA at 66 Portland Place (interior, in opening hours), Battersea Power Station (interior, including Control Room A as a bar), the Oxo Tower's eighth-floor viewing gallery, the Carreras factory forecourt and the Arsenal Stadium façade are all free. Most Art Deco in London is best seen from the street anyway.

Are there Art Deco cinemas still open in London?

A few, in altered form. The Acton Dominion has operated as a bingo hall; the Rayners Lane Grosvenor is a Zoroastrian centre that opens for Open House; several Odeons of the 1930s still show films behind modernised interiors. Art Deco cinemas in London are mostly seen from outside.

Is Battersea Power Station Art Deco?

Its interiors are — Control Room A and Turbine Hall A, in marble and faience, are among the finest Art Deco interiors in Britain. The brick exterior is Giles Gilbert Scott's monumental industrial style. Battersea appears in every Art Deco London list, and in ours.

What happened to the Firestone Factory?

It was demolished over the August bank holiday weekend of 1980, two days before its listing took effect. The outcry changed the listing system and saved the Hoover Building. The Firestone gates and railings survive on the Great West Road, Grade II listed.

Which Art Deco buildings in London can you go inside?

RIBA (free), Battersea Power Station (free), Claridge's and the Savoy (for tea or a drink), Eltham Palace (English Heritage, charge), the Oxo Tower viewing gallery (free), and the Rayners Lane Grosvenor on Open House days. Broadcasting House no longer offers tours.

Is Eltham Palace Art Deco?

Yes — its 1930s interiors by Rolf Engström and Peter Malacrida are the best Art Deco rooms in Britain, inside a house built onto a medieval royal hall. Eltham Palace is run by English Heritage and open daily.

What is the best Art Deco walk in London?

Portland Place to Fleet Street to the Oxo Tower covers the centre in a day; the Hoover Building and the Bromige cinemas make a half-day in the western suburbs by Tube. Blue Crow Media's Art Deco London Map and the Art Deco Society UK's free walks are the guides to carry.

Related pages and models

Sources and further reading