Journal of Historical Geography
‘Mr. Bourne’s Dilemma. Consumer Culture property speculation and department store demise: the rise and fall of Bourne and Hollingsworth on London’s Oxford Street
Sonia Ashmore(a), Bronwen Edwards(b), and David Gilbert(c)
Abstract
This paper explores the twentieth-century rise and fall of the traditional department store Bourne and Hollingsworth in London’s Oxford Street as a means of re-examining the historical geographies of metropolitan consumption cultures. The research move away from a preoccupation with urban retail’s novelty and spectacle towards a consideration of the more conventional and conservative kinds of consumption that have been a vital part of the retail ecology of many major cities in the twentieth century. The paper analysis the intersection of different dimension of the history of metropolitan consumption: whit a culturalist focus on consumer identity and urban microgrographies; but also an examinations of this as a family-owned, paternalistic business, and as a material space, both as a building designed and refurbished by its owner, management, architects and shopfitters, and as a particular site within the routes and flows understanding of the West End. The final approach to Bourne and Hollingsworth as urban property, as a distinctive form of capital asset in the city, allows a new understanding of vulnerability of this kind of retailing by the later twentieth century. The study shows that an emphasis on the significance of consumptions providers at best a partial explanation for changer in the landscapes of consumption: it is argues that cities are the sites of complex intersection between cultural practices and other kinds of geography, in this case those of asset values opportunities for property speculation.
Keywords: Department Store: Urban consumption; Property speculation; London; Retailing; Retail Management; Retail architecture