Former Burton’s tailors, Streatham

sixthland posted a photo:

The former Burton’s tailors at 103–105 Streatham High Road was opened in 1932, designed by Burton’s in‑house architect Harry Wilson. Above the altered ground floor, the original Art Deco façade survives: six stylised elephant heads acting as pilaster capitals, zig‑zag geometric banding, and two small commemorative stones noting the opening by Stanley Howard Burton and Barbara Jessie Burton. The upper elements are likely cast concrete; similar Burton “elephants” appear at Greenwich, Barking, Wolverhampton, Oldham, Halifax, and Weston‑super‑Mare.

Burton used animal capitals as a playful signature during the early 1930s. The exact symbolism isn’t definitively documented, but elephants clustered across several branches, largely in 1931–1932, suggesting a brief house motif phase under Wilson. In Streatham, the tusks point inward (a variant seen on English branches), while Belfast’s point outward.

The Streatham store is one of many “modern temples of commerce” Montague Burton commissioned, reflecting his embrace of Deco branding and an in‑house architecture department. Though the ground floor became the pub now known as the former Pratts & Payne, the upper façade retains the original elephants and Deco detailing recorded in multiple photo surveys.