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Whiteleys is a shopping centre in London, England. It was London's first department store, located in the Bayswater area. The store's main entrance was located on Queensway. ==History== The original Whiteleys department store was created by William Whiteley, who started a drapery shop at 31 Westbourne Grove in 1863. By 1867 it had expanded to a row of shops containing 17 separate departments. By 1890 over 6,000 staff were employed in the business, most of them living in company-owned male and female dormitories, having to obey 176 rules and working 7am to 11pm, six days a week. Whiteley also bought massive farmlands and erected food-processing factories to provide produce for the store and for staff catering. The first storedescribed as "an immense symposium of the arts and industries of the nation and of the world"was devastated in an enormous fire in 1887,〔(Affairs in Foreign Lands; the burning of Whiteley's great establishment. The loss estimated at $2,500,00 - incendiarism suspected. ) New York Times, 8 August 1887〕 one of the largest fires in London's history.〔Shepard, Ernest H (1957) ''Drawn from Memory'', Penguin Books, London, ISBN 0-14-003905-8〕 This was the last of four fires that had devastated the business from 1882.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=William Whiteley, Department Store, Queensway - nationalarchive.gov.uk )〕 In 1907, William Whiteley was murdered by Cecil Whiteley, who claimed to be his illegitimate son. After his death, the board including two of Whiteley's sons allowed for the leases on the various Westbourne Grove properties to relapse and to move into a new purpose built store on Queens Road (now called Queensway).〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=William Whiteley, Department Store, Queensway - nationalarchive.gov.uk )〕 The building was designed by John Belcher and John James Joass, and was opened by the Lord Mayor of London in 1911.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=William Whiteley, Department Store, Queensway - nationalarchive.gov.uk )〕 It was the height of luxury at the time, including both a theatre and a golf-course on the roof. It appears in a number of early 20th-century novels, and in Shaw's 1913 play ''Pygmalion'', where Eliza Doolittle is sent "to Whiteleys to be attired." In the late 1920s, Dr. A. J. Cronin, the novelist, was appointed the medical officer of Whiteleys, and in 1927 rival store Selfridges purchased the business. In the 1950s the chairman Sir Sydney Harold Gillet announced that the store was too big for its turnover and converted the upper floors of the store into office space. These were used by LEO Computers Ltd. in the 1950s and later by International Computers Limited (ICL) for offices and training facilities in the 1970s. The offices were named "Hartree House" after Douglas Rayner Hartree in recognition of his part in the LEO Computers story. Esso Petroleum also rented some of the office space.〔Whitleys Folly: The Lif and Death of a Salesman by Linda Stratmann〕 In 1961 United Drapery Stores purchased Whitleys for a fee of £1,750,000.〔Whitleys Folly: The Life and Death of a Salesman by Linda Stratmann〕 In the late 1970s UDS held a market survey to find out if the losses of the business were down to customer satisfaction. The survey came back positive: it proved that Whitleys did not have enough customers.〔Whitleys Folly: The Life and Death of a Salesman by Linda Stratmann〕 The department store closed down in 1981 remaining empty until the building was purchased by a firm called the Whiteleys Partnership in 1986, later acquired by the Standard Life Assurance Company. Extensive reconstruction followed; the façade and some interior features such as stairs and railings remain, but essentially the building was demolished and rebuilt. During this reconstruction a tower crane collapsed, killing workmen and the driver of a car. In September 2013 the centre was bought by a Brunei family trust for £100 million, in an off market deal.〔http://www.propertyweek.com/news/industry-events/bcsc/bcsc-2013-whiteley-queensway-sold-for-%C2%A3100m/5060536.article〕 The building was designated a Grade II Listed Building in 1970. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whiteleys」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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