Zigaretten Fabrik mit Katzenstatuen

You are standing before Greater London House, a building that famously wears its history as a cigarette factory on its sleeve. When it opened in nineteen twenty-eight as the Arcadia Works, it served as the headquarters for the Carreras Tobacco Company, a business that gained its initial fame from a small shop on Wardour Street. The original shop owner kept a pet black cat that frequently slept in the storefront window, and this cat became the brand logo that defined the company for decades. The factory you see today was purposefully designed as a monumental temple to that mascot, featuring two massive bronze statues of the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet guarding the entrance.