50 – 60 Eastcastle Street

AN ART DECO PRINCESS IN FITZROVIA

Few buildings on Oxford Street can claim a past as colourful as this one. In March 1828, the Queen’s Bazaar opened its doors to the public with the British Diorama, an exhibition in which four enormous romantic landscape paintings, each measuring roughly 9 metres high by 12 metres wide, were moved across a stage on a complex system of rollers and brought to life with special lighting effects. After only a few years, the bazaar closed and was converted into the Princess’s Theatre, which opened on the site in 1836.

Named after the young Princess Victoria, the theatre soon needed further alterations to win back dwindling audiences. Relaunched in 1842, it enjoyed decades of success until the late 19th century, before closing permanently in 1902.

In 1930, the site was bought by Covent Garden Properties Company Limited, and the old theatre was demolished. In its place, the architectural firm Elcock & Sutcliffe designed a new Art Deco office building, which was completed in 1933. Its first tenant was Waring & Gillow, the prominent British furniture manufacturer and retailer, and the building gave the company a direct connection to its showroom at 150 Oxford Street.

After decades of changing ownership and a declining market for bespoke, handmade British furniture, Waring & Gillow finally ceased trading in 1997, the same year the Langham Estate acquired 50 Eastcastle Street. In 2026, the building is completing a comprehensive refurbishment designed by Pitman Tozer Architects, part of the Estate’s £50 million investment programme across Fitzrovia, creating around 46,000 sq ft of modern workspace while celebrating its remarkable heritage.

London Commercial Window Painting That Keeps Businesses Open

Styles Façade Solutions® was instructed to repair and redecorate the steel-framed windows running along both the Eastcastle Street and Winsley Street elevations. With more than 100 period windows across four floors, this was a substantial London commercial window painting project. With the building just moments from Oxford Street, one of Europe’s busiest shopping streets, and the client keen to minimise disruption to the ground-floor restaurant and the wider community, months of expensive, time-consuming and unsightly scaffolding were ruled out.

Working from mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs), our expert restoration and decorating teams were able to start work quickly on returning the windows to their original appearance. As with any property of this age, a thorough inspection was carried out before work began, including testing for lead-based paint. This ensured we complied with the Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002 (CLAW) and kept our team, the client and the public safe.

Once the inspection was complete, the team stripped the existing paint and coatings from the window frames. This allowed repairs to be carried out on the frames and sills to prevent further deterioration. The glass was then masked and protected, and our painting team transformed the once dirty and damaged frames with an impressive new finish.

How We Deliver London Commercial Window Painting from MEWPs

Because the team worked from MEWPs, the site could be cleared at the end of each day, minimising inconvenience to the building’s occupants and the wider community. Once the work was complete, our teams cleaned down and removed all materials from site, leaving more than 100 freshly painted windows on an impressive Art Deco office building.

The team at Styles Façade Solutions® restored the building’s original appearance in just 25 days. This fast turnaround kept disruption to a minimum for surrounding businesses on Oxford Street, the UK’s leading shopping destination.