Spirella

Spirella co-founder and entrepreneur William Wallace Kincaid commissioned the architect Cecil Hignett to design a state-of-the art factory of architectural beauty.

[7] After an ill-fated attempt to market garments of "Stub-tex", a form of Gore-Tex being used under licence from W. L. Gore & Associates, the company was sold in 1985 to the rival Spencers of Banbury and finally closed in July 1989.

The Spirella Building was designed to provide workers with a highly productive and pleasant environment that focused on the comfort of factory employees.

Referred to as the "factory of beauty", it offered a wide array of employee amenities including "baths, showers, gymnastics classes, a library, free eye tests and bicycle repairs".

[11] At its height the company had factories in the USA (Meadville, Pennsylvania, New Haven, Connecticut, and Lincoln Nebraska[12] ), in Canada (in 1910), in the UK (in 1910; from 1912 in the Spirella Building in Letchworth) and in Sweden (Malmö) in 1920 and Niagara Falls NY (in 1917).

Advertisement drawing of a Spirella corsetier delivering and adjusting in a customer's home.
The Spirella Building in Letchworth
A 180 degree panoramic view of Oxford Circus, looking south down Regent Street. Spirella House is the second building from the left fronting onto the circus.