Recent content by Jon_Clarke

It must have been quite an experience going round the store in its heyday, and it certainly seems like it was streets ahead of the retail competition - this also from the Drapers Record description: Every display model is, in fact, based on a real person, made from photographs and drawings...

Thank you, Vivienne; it must have looked stunning in all its colourful and sizeable glory! And it probably ranks among her final commissioned works, shortly before a mural commissioned in 1962 for the Royal Chapel at Windsor Great Park (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Zinkeisen). Theres...

I visited the former Rackhams yesterday (floors 0 - 4, which are still accessible), but there seems little in the way of original '60s furnishings, fixtures and fittings - only areas of herringbone-pattern parquet flooring, the distinctive angled Crittall windows and travertine-faced lift...

Advert from the Illustrated London News, giving further engineering details about the project, and a couple of photos of the interior of Rackhams, showing the elegant stairs and banks of escalators.

A photo of the recently completed Rackham’s store (from The Surveyor & Municipal Engineer, 10 December 1960), with the office tower part of the development still under scaffold. At the time, this 4½-acre site was one of the largest post-war developments in Europe, and besides the store for...

Thank you. John, for all the fascinating information on Rackhams in its various developmental stages and guises. An article in the Birmingham Mail from last year [https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/nostalgia/rackhams-memories-60s--70s-23744061] indicated that you were publishing a book on the...