Broadgate

I think it's the ones you can see here in the middle of the High Street junction.

Bollards. I bet you knew it if you hit one of them with a car.

....and I'll bet most of the time, looking at the busy picture, you'd never know they were there until you did hit one! Mind you, guessing there were not as many cars on the road back then. I do love early street furniture though. I did drive through the centre of Turin once in rush hour. The Italian Job was never so life-like!

No Helen, I believe it's true.

I went to Italy some time in the 90s and saw a car parked 90 degrees to the road, on a zebra crossing. I was overtaken while waiting at a rail crossing with the driver on the opposite side of the road before the second barrier went down. Never had or have I seen worse driving. The early street furniture was sometimes chunkier or more delicate but what made the real difference was the lack of signs all over the place. Maybe when satnavs really work and or we're all in self drive cars, maybe road signs will become a thing of the past?

Not strictly street furniture as such, but another thing that seemed to be very popular of the pre-war era was these stuck-on shop signs nailed over upper frontages. I know this one has been posted before but the Boots / Cash / Chemist signs on the outlet on the corner of Broadgate and Market Place were a good example, before its horrible deco reface - that one also looked a bit French / Parisian in style to me with its loft windows.

I agree with you, Neil, about the roof as it was my same thought about it. I think the same about the building at the bottom of Warwick Lane, although it's the windows that seem French. The raised signs I'm assuming were an American influence. One of the things that make locations pretty is a lack of building design diversity (assuming the design has any merits to start with). The British have an affliction for always wanting to be different and it jars when buildings sit together in a road or small area. Often the designs are individually fine. You can sometimes successfully merge old and new because the modern can act like a mirror or blank wall, becoming a backdrop rather than a feature. A limited colour pallet, a limited set of window and door styles, even similar roof materials can draw different buildings into a pleasing whole. I'm not a massive Art Deco fan but it can be pleasantly stylish. The Boots replacement was a particularly ugly example.

Is that Timmy Mallett's shop, Wackaday?

Where are they Manor-House?

Alderman's Green.

I don't know about the Broadgate/Hertford Street shop, but there was a James Wackrill of Cross Cheaping.

Has to be worth a reshare, given its glorious Cov Archive sizing and detail! 1936 btw

I love that "L M S Express parcels" is still delivered in a horse drawn wagon! And I wouldn't have fancied being the telephonist at the "City Shirt Shop"!