Regent Palace Hotel, Glasshouse Street, London 1976

The Regent Palace Hotel on Glasshouse Street, London, in 1976, with its great curved corner frontage still dominating this busy part of the West End. The rooftop and upper-façade lettering for the hotel remain in place above the entrance canopy, while on the right the shopfront of H. Samuel adds another familiar high-street name to the scene. A black London taxi turns past in the foreground, pedestrians cross the street beneath the hotel, and the tight framing between neighbouring buildings gives a strong sense of Soho and Piccadilly’s dense urban grain. Opened in 1915 and long one of central London’s best-known hotels, the Regent Palace stood here until its demolition in the early 2000s, making this a valuable record of a once-prominent West End landmark.