Shell Centre
Coordinates: 51°30′13.8″N 00°7′0.8″W / 51.503833°N 0.116889°W
The Shell Centre, in London, is one of the two central offices of oil major Shell (the other is in The Hague). It is located on Belvedere Road in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a prominent feature on the South Bank of the River Thames near County Hall, and now forms the backdrop to the London Eye.
The current Shell Centre comprises the tower building and three adjoining nine-storey wings (collectively formerly known as the "Upstream Building"). The original development also included a separate building known as the "Downstream Building", which was separated from the Upstream Building by the railway viaduct between Charing Cross and Waterloo East. The Downstream Building was disposed of by Shell in the 1990s and is now a block of residential apartments known as the White House, and has been heightened by a storey.
The Shell Centre occupies part of the site cleared for the 1951 Festival of Britain. The areas closer to the River Thames now include Jubilee Gardens and the South Bank Centre. Jubilee Gardens remained undeveloped prior to its laying out as an open space, largely because of a restrictive covenant in favour of Shell that restricts any building on the part of the site directly between the Shell Tower and the River Thames. The naming of the Shell Centre buildings perpetuated the split of the Festival site into distinct Upstream and Downstream areas – separated by the railway viaduct approach to Hungerford Bridge.
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