Wickhams (department store)

You are looking at a building that stands as one of the most famous acts of commercial stubbornness in London history. The facade of this former department store, completed in 1927, features an elegant, symmetrical design of towering columns and a grand central clock tower intended to rival the most prestigious shops in the city. However, the store is famously missing a section, a gap-toothed void that breaks the architectural grandeur of the colonnade. This oddity remains because a local jewelry business, Spiegelhalter, refused to sell their small shop to the developers. The department store owners bought every other property on the block and proceeded to build their massive empire directly around the tiny family shop, which remained in its original location for decades. The developers even ordered the stone for the entire facade before realizing the jewelers would never move, leading to the construction of a building that permanently bears the physical mark of a lost business negotiation.