Oxford Street, London 1972
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Description
This bustling early-’70s scene captures Oxford Circus at full intensity: dense traffic, packed pavements and a forest of Routemasters rolling towards Marble Arch. Dominating the right-hand side is the rebuilt C&A store at 376–384 Oxford Street. This was C&A’s first British branch, opened in 1922, but the original building was destroyed during the Blitz. The post-war replacement seen here served shoppers for decades until the chain withdrew from the UK around 2000; the site later became a Gap store.
Opposite, the crisp modernist block at 399–405 Oxford Street was completed by Lloyds Bank in the late 1960s. Alongside the bank was a Garners Steak House. Today the former steak house is occupied by a tourist gift shop, though Lloyds Bank still remains.
Running through the centre of the image is a temporary pedestrian and traffic deck, a raised walkway and roadway installed to manage crowds and vehicles while Bond Street Underground station underwent major reconstruction. The works were part of the early phases of the Jubilee Line project — then still known as the Fleet Line — which required significant underground realignment beneath Oxford Street.
The combination of construction works, post-war shops and 1970s traffic gives this photograph a wonderfully specific moment in Oxford Street’s history — a street on the cusp of transformation, yet still filled with all the colour and energy of the West End in the early ’70s.
