Had you been motoring along the Fulham Road in the days before WW1 you could have pulled into number 81 and bought new tyres at the brand-new Michelin UK headquarters and depot.
Drive-in fitting bays fronted the street, and there were over 30,000 tyres kept in stock in the basement. Yours would be brought up to the ground floor via lifts and then rolled to the bays down a purposefully sloped floor. There was a ‘touring office’ that provided maps and guides, and the upper floors housed the offices.
This is Michelin House, the wonderfully art nouveau(ish) building opened in 1911 that still stands in South Kensington.
The architect was Francois Espinasse, of whom little appears to be known other than he spent most of his working life at Michelin, and the only other building that he seems to have been involved with was the 1908 Paris HQ of the company.
It was sold and refurbished in 1985 (with upper floors added that echo the circularity of the tyres once sold beneath) and housed a book publisher, the upmarket furniture store The Conran Shop, and Sir Terance Conran’s ‘Bibendum’ restaurant.
‘Bibendum’ is the character made from tyres – the ‘Michelin Man’ – that still features in the tyre company’s advertising (although these days is slimmer and a non-smoker), and whose image shines out of the wonderful stained glass windows of Michelin House.
The originals of these were removed to the company’s Stoke on Trent factory in 1940 for safekeeping – and lost. What we see now are reconstructions made when the building was remodeled, as are the cupolas made of tyres on the corners of the facade.
The largest of these windows – the arch facing into Fulham Road – has the quote from the Roman poet Horace, ‘nunc est Bibendum’ (‘now is the time to drink’) that gave the Michelin Man, and Conran’s restaurant, its name.
Nearly 40 years on from the remodelling Sir Terence and his eponymous store are gone and the restaurant is now ‘Claude Bosi at Bibendum’. Appropriately, it hold two Michelin stars.
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