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Rediscovered snapshots show how London has changed in 50 years
Ross Lydall04.09.09
There are fewer cars on the road, more small shops and bolder advertising hoardings.
But, as these newly discovered photographs of central London in the post-Second World War era show, much remains the same.
The London Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus, then showing the film Joan Of Arc, is now the Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum.
And the Victoria Embankment may have shed its bunting, for a 1950 visit of French president Vincent Auriol, but remains a major thoroughfare.
Piccadilly Circus still has a halo of illuminated signs - but the products being advertised could not be more different from each other in era.
The pictures were taken between 1946 and 1953 for Westminster council.
They were saved from the skip 15 years ago, when the council moved offices, by the uncle of freelance photographer Jeff Moore's partner, and forgotten before being found during a spring-clean.
Mr Moore returned to the locations to check how each had changed.
"It's strange," he said. "There are some places - one of them is Bear Street - which are utterly different. You can't work out where the picture was taken. Then there are others that are exactly the same.
"Even though the photographs are black and white everything looks much more colourful.
"The advertising signs on the buildings are full of lightbulbs. There is advertising everywhere, which you don't really see now."
Peter Handley, of the Westminster Society conservation group, credited the council for protecting many landmark buildings.
He said: "I think Westminster has done as good a job as they could have, given the incredible pressure for redevelopment."
Reader views (1)
This is farcical. Displaying a few building facades and saying that London remains the same as 50 years is ridiculous. Many of the buildings from 50 years ago are gone, and the inside of most of the others has been gutted, keeping just the facade for the tourists. Even now, the buildings at the NW corner of Leicester Square are being replaced, and the SW corner block (including the large Odeon West theatre and a 150-year-old pub -- the Hand and Racquet) is to be replaced in the coming months. The tourists come to London to see heritage and get away from the concrete-and-glass monsters at home, and what do they find? The same concrete-and-glass more and more here in London. Since tourism is London's and the U.K.'s biggest money-maker, piecemeal destruction of the goose laying the golden eggs will have consequences. You can't have the golden eggs and also cook the goose.
- Phil Jones, London UK
