Construction of Lewis’s, Leeds is one of three films in the YFA catalogue which focus on the Lewis’s store in Leeds. Lewis’s New Store, Leeds (4852) also concentrates on the method of construction but at a closer range than Construction of Lewis’s which is a collection of wider shots of the building site over the course of the construction of the store. Opening of Lewis’s, Leeds (4851) is a film showing the opening day, 17th September 1932. Lewis’s (not to be confused with John Lewis) was a...

Construction of Lewis’s, Leeds is one of three films in the YFA catalogue which focus on the Lewis’s store in Leeds. Lewis’s New Store, Leeds (4852) also concentrates on the method of construction but at a closer range than Construction of Lewis’s which is a collection of wider shots of the building site over the course of the construction of the store. Opening of Lewis’s, Leeds (4851) is a film showing the opening day, 17th September 1932.

Lewis’s (not to be confused with John Lewis) was a chain of department stores founded by David Lewis. The first store was opened in Liverpool in 1856 and was Britain’s oldest department store, reaching 151 years of business until it ceased trading in 2007 and closed in 2010. Lewis originally intended the store to be a men’s tailor shop selling ready-made articles of clothing aimed at the working class, and expanded to include women’s clothing in 1864. He was inspired by a trip to Paris where he encountered Bon Marché, the world’s first department store. Lewis further developed the Liverpool shop into a department store in the 1870s, with additional stores built in Manchester and Birmingham. Several stores were later opened in the early twenty first century in Leeds, Glasgow, Leicester, and Hanley in Stoke-on-Trent. The location of the first store in a port city meant that Lewis could buy goods directly from shippers, cutting out wholesalers and reducing prices making luxury goods more affordable. This was in keeping with Lewis’s side goal of improving the life of the working class; the stores also sold ‘penny readings’, extracts of well-known writers, such as Dickens; and after Lewis’ death, his wealth was donated to public projects such as hospitals and theatres. At the time of filming, Lewis’s was owned by the Cohen family, who had introduced new and innovative ideas to the store including the country’s first mannequins, and flooding the basement to make a mini-Venice, a commercial stunt to advertise the new Venetian products.

The construction of the Leeds branch of Lewis’s was headed by Sir Edwin Airey who was born in Leeds in 1878, the sixth generation of a long line of builders in his family. Airey joined his father’s company in 1903 which was then renamed Wm. Airey and Son Leeds ltd, and took charge of the company the following year after his father died. During the First World War Airey served as an advisor to the Minister of Munitions and was the government’s Chief Technical Advisor on transport and cold storage. For five years after the war he was an advisor to the Minister of Health. Airey was responsible for a number of structural inventions that were used nationwide. His first was a portable aircraft hangar which he designed during the First World War. The second was an inter-war development, the Duo-slab method of building houses, which utilised factory-made parts that could be made and constructed by unskilled labourers. The Lewis’s store featured in the film was the first project that utilised his third invention; the Aerodome floor, a lighter designed flooring than that used by the structural engineer of the store and saved the use 4,000 tons of steel framing enabling Airey to hand over the finished building twenty weeks early. The Aerodome floor was also used in the Brotherton Library at Leeds University, the Bank of England, and Headingley and Murryfield Stadiums. Airey’s fourth invention was the Airey house, another pre-fabricated house that required little time or skill to make or erect featured in the film Airey House (4853). Widely used after WWII as temporary housing for those who lost their houses in air raids, over 25,000 were built in England and Wales and also in the Netherlands where he was made a Commander of the Order of the Orange Nassau for his services to the people of the Netherlands. This was a new addition to his repertoire of titles as he was knighted for his services to housing and social welfare in 1922 and held the title of Lord Mayor of Leeds in the years 1922 and 1923. Around this time he and his family moved to Oakwood Grange where Roundhay Garden Scene, the oldest surviving film, had been shot.

References

Bricking around the Airey houses

Lewis's – page from the Liverpool localwiki

Lewis’s closes down the shutters after 154 years – BBC Liverpool online news

Lewis’s: the shop that time forgot

Oldest department store to close – BBC online news

Prefabs: Factory Homes for post-War England