83 Whitechapel High Street

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83 Whitechapel High Street
Contributed by Survey of London on July 10, 2018

A utilitarian rebuilding of 1957, originally with steel Crittall windows and a step-back to the fifth floor at the rear. In 2007 the upper floors were converted to self-contained flats (known as Gouldy House, 82a Whitechapel High Street) and the top floor setback infilled with a mansard extension in 2010.¹ The building sits on the footprint of a war-damaged stolid Jacobethan building by John Hamilton, architect (1845-1907), of four brick stories with composite-stone dressings, a shallow oriel, and an attic floor in a shaped gable, and wide display window lighting the first-floor showroom. It was built in 1899 by Coulsell Bros of Morpeth Street for Philip Moses, outfitters who remained till c. 1915.² The 1899 building replaced a sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century timber-framed shop house, of three storeys with shallow oriels to the first and second floors and a tiled gambrel attic, very likely an eighteenth-century alteration. William Hart, a hat manufacturer who went bankrupt in 1846 was there from the 1840s to c. 1865, letting residential rooms ‘with use of a pianoforte’ above, and, after a brief interlude as a jewellers, in 1870, Samuel Gaved, set up as an ironmonger after four years as a tobacconist next door at 82, the business taken over in 1885 by Philip Cohen, ‘the cheapest house for furnishing ironmongery in the East End’. He was replaced by the oft-moving Philip Moses, outfitter, who rebuilt the premises in 1899.³

Use after 1915 included Hines, china and glass retailers, and from 1933 Alberts menswear, who later opened a branch at No. 145. After bomb damage, Alberts relocated to No. 88 and following rebuilding, shop use (fabrics etc) with offices above continued till c. 1970 when Instone, a specialist travel agent arranging house parties – ‘for the “discerning traveller” ... no family groups, boisterous children or rowdy teens’ - and escorted tours to Russia continued till c. 2005, followed by a newsagent until opening as Exmouth Coffee Company, an independent coffee shop, in 2012. ⁴