Tate Britain

You are approaching a building that owes its existence to the invention of the sugar cube. Sir Henry Tate was a Victorian industrialist who made his immense fortune by revolutionizing the way sugar was sold and consumed. After patenting a machine to cut sugar into uniform, dice-sized cubes, he became one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He used a significant portion of that wealth to fund the construction of this gallery, which opened in eighteen ninety-seven. His primary motivation was to provide a permanent home for his private collection of British paintings, particularly works by the Pre-Raphaelites, which other institutions had previously declined to house.