A view of the front elevation of 36 Marylebone High Street, Marylebone. The four-storey brick terraced building has four sash windows on each upper storey and a ground-floor shop unit. Built c1790, it is a rare eighteenth-century survivor on the High Street. A plain, understated house with a Neoclassical cornice between Victorian decorative features above the ground floor. Modernised in 1891-92, it was bomb-damaged during World War II, and later occupied by the BBC in an expansion from its premises in Beaumont Mews, which runs behind. In 1976 milliner and artist David Shilling opened his first shop at number 36; part of a trend towards exclusive, fashionable shops on the High Street. In this view, a sign above the shop reads: 'Design Audio'; it appears to be unoccupied. At right, a step and door with transom; an entrance to the flats above where the windows have makeshift curtains. Adjacent at number 35, dummies in the window display of a fashion retailer. At left, the cobbled entrance to Beaumont Mews above which number 37, with the legend 'Decorators'. Number 36 has been refurbished, a mansard roof and two attic windows added, but otherwise remains remarkably unchanged.
