Turkey Cafe
The Turkey Cafe is a building with a flamboyant Art Nouveau facade in Granby Street, Leicester, England. It was built in 1900 and is now a Grade II listed building, once again used as a café. The facade puns on two meanings of "turkey", with a vaguely Eastern exotic style of architecture and three large turkey birds on the facade, one sculpted on each side of the ground floor shopfront and another forming a large coloured panel of Royal Doulton tiles right at the top.
The site of the Turkey Cafe was owned by James Wesley, a grocer and confectioner, from 1877 to 1899. Wesley sold the site to architect Arthur Wakerley, a well-known Leicester architect who was also a prominent supporter of the Temperance Movement. Upon completion he leased it to John Winn, who owned a number of other cafes in Manchester and the Oriental Cafe in Leicester. The offices of Wakerley's architectural practice were above Winn's Oriental Cafe, making it easy to negotiate a deal regarding the construction and occupancy of a new cafe on Granby Street. Wakerley approached the Royal Doulton Company for help constructing his design for the new "Turkey Cafe".
The style of the Turkey Cafe reflected what was popular at that time, which was the new trend of art nouveau. The building created a sense of stability by visually implying a pyramid structure. This was done by having seven arches on the ground floor and then decreasing the number of arches on each level. The pyramid is completed with a single turkey located at the top of the building. The building was coloured blue, green, and buff, which allowed any onlooker to fully appreciate the shapes and curves of the building's designs. The facade was constructed using tiles, hollow blocks, and a type of terracotta called carraraware. The Doultons actually developed carraware in 1888, which is a matt-glazed stoneware. The carraware tiles of this frontage were handmade by William Neatby, a ceramic artist who worked for the Doultons. In addition to these features, art nouveau can be found in the decorations etched into the front window, as well as the red and green art nouveau designs of the rear tea room windows.
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