24-26 Whitechapel Road
Posted by Sarah Milne, Survey of London on Feb. 21, 2017
At the beginning of 2017 the late-Victorian pair of shop-houses at this address was demolished, for replacement in replica form as part of a wider development project. The circumstances of the pair's construction in 1893-4 were unusual. An early timber-framed and jettied three-storey pair here was gutted by fire on 20 August 1893. For reconstruction the landlord, Fasham Venables, a linendraper on Whitechapel High Street, employed Henry Hyman Collins as surveyor and Amos Eaton & Co. as builder, the last also based on Whitechapel High Street. The old front walls were retained for the sake of the upper-storey projection, but Arthur Crow, the District Surveyor, objected and took the matter to court, arguing that the work constituted rebuilding so the projection had to be sacrificed. He prevailed, and work with set-back brick front walls was completed in March 1894. Please have a look at the images attached to this site on our map.
