Grosvenor Road, London 1960

1960s colour photo showing traffic at Grosvenor Road with the junction with Vauxhall Bridge Road, part of London’s then-emerging Inner Ring Road system. The foreground includes a motorcycle with a sidecar, still a practical and fairly common sight on London streets in the immediate post-war years.

Dominating the background is Imperial House, a large inter-war office building completed in 1929 as part of the redevelopment of this stretch of Grosvenor Road near the Thames. Designed in a restrained classical style, Imperial House housed government departments and commercial offices and remains a prominent landmark today. The scene captures central London traffic at a moment when private cars, buses, motorcycles and sidecars still mixed freely at major junctions, just before the capital became increasingly dominated by car-centred road planning.