Corner House

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jews played a significant role in the creation of the modern city by pioneering both department stores and affordable eateries. J. Lyons & Co., assumed in its heyday to have been the largest caterer in the world, epitomized the latter. Established in 1894, it was named after Joseph Lyons (1847–1917) because his partners, the tobacconists Salmon & Gluckstein, had reservations about lending their name to the innovative undertaking. By 1914, J. Lyons & Co. was running close to 300 venues in various British cities, backed up by massive production plants. Until well after the Second World War, the London Corner Houses in particular were enormously popular among Jews—whether from West London, North London or the East End. They offered constant musical entertainment and few enterprises spent quite as much on freelance musicians, many of them Jewish. In 1932, the Lyons entertainment budget ran to £150,000, an absolute fortune at the time. This is one of three postcards produced by J. Lyons & Co. and sent to a common friend in Paris by a group of English and German friends to convey greetings from their meetings at the Oxford Street and Strand Corner Houses in the autumn of 1928 and 1929.

Postcard from the book: Jews in Old Postcards and Prints