During the Second World War, the building was heavily camouflaged with trees to protect it from enemy bombing and was retooled to manufacture tank and aircraft parts. After the war, Hoover expanded the site with two more modern-looking buildings behind the original structure. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hoover vacuums became highly popular in the carpeted suburban homes of the postwar era, but by the late 1970s cheaper Asian competitors had gained ground, the factory closed, and hundreds of local people were left unemployed as many nearby 1930s factories were also shut down and demolished. It soon seemed likely that the Hoover Building would be lost as well, despite efforts such as Elvis Costello’s 1981 song praising the splendor of the Hoover factory on Western Avenue, and although Tesco purchased part of the site in 1989 and turned a small end into a grocery store, most of the property still sat in ruins. Then in 2017 IDM Properties bought the factory and, over more than three years, restored its damaged railings and many other original Art Deco features while redesigning the structure into some of London’s most modern Art Deco-style apartments. Today, the protected historic building contains a large lobby, 20 first-floor flats, 30 second-floor flats, and 10 large double apartments on the third floor, and its renovation has helped inspire a wider revival of Ealing’s Art Deco architecture while attracting visitors through tours, videos, photographs, and even Airbnb stays.
The Hoover Factory
In 1933, the expanding Hoover Vacuum Company built an extraordinarily beautiful streamlined factory in Ealing, a working-class suburb of London. Designed by the British firm Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, which was responsible for many Art Deco buildings in the United Kingdom during the 1920s and 1930s, the factory displayed geometric patterns throughout its doorways, brickwork, and emerald corner windows. Repeated horizontal lines and geometric forms shaped the facade, while streamlined modern curves appeared in the floor tiles, side windows, and circling rooflines. Its most striking features, however, were the stairway and balcony railings, whose repeating geometric steel patterns stood out boldly against the bright white walls and became one of the building’s largest budget items because so much railing was used throughout the complex. At 254,000 square feet, the emerald-and-white factory was considered one of the most modern in Europe and employed more than 1,600 workers during the height of the Great Depression.
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