this paper eplores the twentieth-century ries and fall of the traditional department store Bourne and Hollingsworth in london's Oxford street as a means of re-examining the historical geographies consumption cultures. The research moves away from a preoccupation with urban retail's novelty nd spectacle towatds a consideration of the more conventional and conservative kinds of consumptuon that have been a vital part of the retail ecology of many major cities in the twentieth century.The paper
analyses the intersections of different dimensions of the histiry as a family-owned,paternalistic business, and as a material space, both as a building desigened and refurbished by its owners, management,architects and shopfitters, and as a particular site within the routes and flows of the West End. The final aporoach to Boorne and Hollingsworth as urban property,as a distinctive form of capital asset in the city, allows a new understanding of the vulnerability of this kind of retailing by the later twentieth century.The study shows that an emphasis on the significance of cultures of consumption provides at beat a partial explanation for changes in the landscapes of consumption it is argued that cities are the sites of complex intersections between cultural practices and other kinds of geography, in this case those of asset values and opportunities for property speculation.