Piccadilly Circus: 1953

This is a found remounted slide in a white plastic mount and shows a view of Piccadilly Circus looking east. On the left are the advertisements on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus and on the right is the statue of Eros enclosed in a gilded cage of aluminium and fairy lights. This is either May or June 1953 and the decorations surrounding the statue are part of Westminster City Council’s street decorations for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on 2nd June 1953. The designer of the cage and many other decorations was the consulting architect to the council, Sir Hugh Casson. Sir. Hugh was also the President of the Architectural Association and had received his knighthood for his work on the Festival of Britain exhibition two years earlier. Some of the newspapers of the time described him as “Mr. Magic” who would wave his magic wand over an austerity London, his own catchphrase was “The Queen will have colour wherever she goes”. One of his ideas was to put bunches of flowers in the hands of every statue on the Coronation route but this never came to be because the council decided to board up the statues but then Sir. Hugh just painted them; his favourite colour was lavender. He was described as a small unkempt man with long hair who always wore a duffle coat and yellow socks, when he was asked by Westminster City Council to be their consultant he was in bed with chickenpox, he said yes and they gave him £50,000.00 to design the decorations. He was also an interior and theatre designer and famously designed the interiors of the Royal yacht Britannia and the public rooms of the Ocean liner SS Canberra, he became President of the Royal Academy in 1975 and died in 1999.

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