taken 10 years ago, near to Marylebone, Westminster, England
HMV comes home
After all its financial upheavals HMV has returned to its spiritual home where the business was first opened in 1921. The opening was reported in "The Guardian" newspaper as follows:
"A great deal was heard at the opening of the fine new headquarters of the Gramophone Company in Oxford Street to-day about the artistic mission of the gramophone. Sir Edward Elgar, who opened the building, is a great believer in this mission. What musicians want, he said, is more listeners, and he thinks that the dissemination of good music by the gramophone will give us a new public which, while knowing nothing about the technical side of music, will know how to listen to music with true appreciation. He would like to see a gramophone with a selection of good music in every school. He recommended the modern gramophone with its superior technical accomplishment to the 'wild and virulent piano playing' so painfully popular in the suburbs.
"The new building is spacious and attractive, and altogether an interesting example of the super-shop of to-day. The novelty will be the first school for shop assistants in the country. The bright young men from the country will come to Oxford Street to learn all the fine shades and nice feelings of their profession - how to satisfy varying music tastes, how to pronounce the names of foreign musicians, and generally to understand what they are selling and the idiosyncrasies of those who buy."
The present building dates from 1938-1939, and was designed by Modernist architect Joseph Emberton.
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