# Lewis`s 5th floor,Liverpool,May2010. PIC HEAVY



## wherever i may roam (May 21, 2010)

History- (taken from Wikipedia)
The first Lewis's was opened in 1856 in Liverpool by entrepreneur David Lewis, as a men's and boys' clothing store, mostly manufacturing his own stock. In 1864 Lewis's branched out into women's clothing. In the 1870s the store expanded and added departments, including shoes in 1874 and tobacco in 1879. Also in 1879, Lewis's opened one of the world's first "Christmas grottos" in Lewis's Bon Marche, Church Street, Liverpool. It was named "Christmas Fairyland".
The first Lewis's outside Liverpool opened in nearby Manchester in 1877, and another, by personal suggestion from Joseph Chamberlain on his new Corporation Street in Birmingham in 1885. The Manchester store included a full scale ballroom on the fifth floor, which was also used for exhibitions. Buying offices were also located on the fifth floor until a takeover by Liverpool-based competitor Owen Owen. A fourth store opened in Sheffield in 1884 but proved unprofitable and closed in 1888.
Louis Cohen took over the business after Lewis's death, and oversaw a period of consolidation.
After Louis Cohen's death, control passed to Harold and Rex Cohen, who took the company public in 1924. New stores were once again opened, in Glasgow (1929), Leeds (1932), Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent (1934) and Leicester (1936). Lewis's were generally the largest department stores in their localities.
In 1951 the Lewis's group purchased the famous London department store Selfridges and later became part of the Sears Group headed by Charles Clore.
A branch was opened on Blackpool promenade, next to Blackpool Tower, in 1964. The building had a distinctive 1960s design, with a turquoise tiled exterior. After it closed in 1993, building work was undertaken to remove some of the upper floors and the redeveloped site houses a Mecca bingo hall, with the ground floor space being subsequently occupied by Woolworths Group and a variety of small unit retailers.
The company is now defunct. It went into administration in 1991 as a result of problems such as the then recession and failing to compete effectively. This resulted in Liverpool competitor Owen Owen buying up several branches of Lewis's (but retaining the Lewis's brand name on those purchased stores); Sir Philip Green revived the selling of toys on a large scale, by launching the brand Kids HQ in four Lewis's Owen Owen Stores, including those in Liverpool and Manchester. The Leicester branch traded independently for a short while, following a management buyout, as "Lewis's of Leicester", before eventually closing. Other branches including the Birmingham store closed down.
After the 1996 Manchester bombing by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Manchester, trading space in Lewis's was rented to Marks & Spencer and other smaller retailers displaced following heavy damage to the Corn Exchange. Both Marks and Spencer and the small retailers moved into new accommodation in 1999. The store suffered from a smaller footfall thereafter, and attempted to fight back by reinventing itself as partially a "discount retailer". In a final attempt to arrest the decline, the remainder-clothing retailer TK Maxx was invited to trade from the basement floor. The Manchester branch closed in 2001; it is now occupied by a branch of Primark.
The only store continuing to trade as Lewis's is the Liverpool original. This followed the sale of other branches of Lewis's from Owen Owen to other operators such as Debenhams and Allders during the 1990s.
On 28 February 2007 the Liverpool store went into liquidation. On 23 March 2007 it was sold as a going concern to Vergo Retail Ltd, enabling the store to continue to trade as Lewis's. In February 2010 it was announced that the store will close for good in June 2010. 
The Liverpool Lewis's building retains original lifts which have no controls for shoppers, instead everything is controlled by a lift operator who works from a fold down seating platform next to a lever they use to control the lift. They will be taken out when the store closes.






* Above the main entrance to the Liverpool flagship store is a statue of a nude man by Sir Jacob Epstein. Its official title is Liverpool Resurgent but is nicknamed locally "Dickie Lewis". It is a well-known local meeting place and was immortalised in the 1962 anthemic song "In My Liverpool Home" by Peter McGovern:
"We speak with an accent exceedingly rare,
Meet under a statue exceedingly bare" 





Sorry about the quality of some pics as they were all taken on my mobile phone...




Hallway.



















Original building before the ww2..




Self serve restaurant..


































The Mersey Room Restaurant..














The Red Rose Restaurant..




Salon..
















































..Thank you


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## phill.d (May 21, 2010)

Now that's a real timewarp indeed. Great ornate decor, and god to see a report a little different.
Any ideas what's to happen to the building? I do hope a lot of that interior won't just be skipped


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## wherever i may roam (May 21, 2010)

phill.d said:


> Now that's a real timewarp indeed. Great stuff, and something a little different.
> Any ideas what's to happen to the building? I do hope a lot of that interior won't just be skipped



Its getting turned into a hotel & apartments ive heard..


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## TK421 (May 22, 2010)

Some of that wallpaper is back in fashion! Really good to see photos from this place again, what a stunning building also. Well done that man!


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## wherever i may roam (Jun 18, 2010)

Seen this today in the local rag,thought i'd scan it & post it for those interested..titled "LEWIS'S 1856-2010" The life of a merseyside's oldest deparment store...

The little shop in Bold st,where David Lewis,in 1856 laid the foundation of his subsequent success.





The shop fronts of jacob's tailoring & Lewis's...





Adverts from the last 100 years..





The sales floor from 1960..





Sales floor...





The dining area...





The department store's electrical department...





The bank inside the department store...





Ken Dodd at the zoo inside Lewis's...





Here he is again in the toy department in the 1960's...





The grotto...





The Lewis's food group outing to Blackpool in 1949...





The frontline Lewis's female staff...





Lewis's celebrate their centenary in 1956,Blackpool...





The Lewis's ladies athletic team...





The cricket team,1925...





A 1920's graphic showing a cutaway view of the department store..





The great fire of 1886...





1941 after the devastation of the may blitz...





The store being re-built after the blitz...


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## Foxylady (Jun 19, 2010)

Cheers for those, WIMR. Fascinating stuff.  
Those frontline ladies look a bit nazi-ish, though...that uniform...those leather gloves!!!


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