The owners.

In the beginning, the AR was owned by several firms as the rough Victorian market took its toll. Then, the company which became the Architectural Press was owned by two families for generations. When they fell out, rapid and disturbing changes began again until we were purchased by the present owners.

The company that founded The Architectural Review was set up in 1894 at Talbot House, in Arundel Street off the Strand in London by four partners, Edmund William Abram, Charles Rogers, J. W. Norfolk, and James Dudley Morgan. Abram seems to have been the driving force - he was already a pioneer photojournalist and had a strong belief that British architects and builders were not being properly served by the existing professional and trade papers.(1) The company's first venture was to launch The Builders' Journal on 12 February 1895, a weekly paper that after several changes of title has become our sister magazine The Architects' Journal. The AR was launched through the pages of the Journal in November 1896 for 6d monthly.(2) In 1897, the Talbot Newspaper Co became the Effingham Press. There was another change of title in 1899, when Abram persuaded his remaining partners(3) to remake the company as Professional and Trade Papers Ltd which would offer a wide range of magazines. William Regan and Percy Hastings were taken on as advertising representatives.

Abram may have had visions, but he seems not to have had the business nous to support them. The company went bust on 4 August 1900 for the then colossal sum of [pounds]70 000. The remains were acquired by a syndicate headed by Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail); other members were Eyre & Spottiswoode (publishers and printers) and the Hastings brothers. Henry Wilson resigned as AR editor and the board appointed an editorial committee of distinguished architects with D. S. MacColl as executive editor (p27). In 1904, MacColl was encouraged by Blomfield to ask for more pay and responsibilities. The request was turned down and Hastings sacked him, appointing Macartney as editor. Blomfield and Belcher resigned in disgust. Hastings bought Technical Journals Ltd from the consortium with two partners: George King and William Regan (who had previously been on commission); Regan had 1000 shares, Hastings and King 500 each.

The company was at last more or less on an even keel, though there were ups and downs. In 1910 for instance, Macartney had to accept a nasty cut in his editorial fee from [pounds]200 to [pounds]50, but by 1913, he and the company were sufficiently self-confident to relaunch the AR with a lavish new format (p35). The Newtons took over as editors in 1921 (p43) for a fee of 10 guineas an issue. In 1922, George King died and the brilliant architectural draughtsman William Walcot (p44) took his place as director.

In 1925, the company took a form that was to last for well over half a century. It moved from Tothill Street to Queen Anne's Gate. Percy Hastings bought Walcot's shares and became a virtually equal shareholder to Maurice, the son of William Regan. The arrangement continued for many years with the Regan family always having one more share than the Hastings. Percy Hastings made his son, Hubert de Cronin, titular editor of both magazines in 1927 (p43).

In 1937, H. de C. moved from London to live on a Sussex farm and his day-to-day involvement with the firm declined. James Richards, who had joined the AR from the Journal ran the magazine, but Hastings would not give up the title of editor. William Regan retired and his son Maurice became chairman of the Architectural Press. One of the new chairman's first actions was to try to increase the circulation by using an early form of direct mail. The postal campaign resulted in 200 new subscriptions - double the hoped-for increase, bringing the total up to about 500. (The price was then 2/6d per copy, the cost of manufacture 5/6d, with the difference and profit made up by the advertisements.)

The War had an immediate effect: in September 1939, Queen Anne's Gate was requisitioned by the Wrens(4) and the firm moved to a villa in Cheam. When Richards was called up by the Ministry of Information, Nikolaus Pevsner edited the magazine.

Richards returned in 1946, and the company moved back to Queen Anne's Gate, where Hastings started to make his fabled pub The Bride of Denmark in the basement using fragments of bombed buildings. From then until the 1980s, the structure of the firm remained roughly the same. In 1967, Maurice Regan died and his son Michael became joint managing director with John Hastings; H. de C. was in the chair. The AR's fortunes declined as the AJ's rose in the white heat of technology. H. de C.'s attempts to save the day with the Manplan issues failed: he retired in 1973.

Michael Regan and John Hastings struggled on (and with each other) adopting various expedients to try to run the Architectural Press in harmony. By 1986, it was clear that they could not, and they sold the firm (while it was still making a good profit) to United Trade Press, a subsidiary of Ladbrokes, the bookmakers. When that firm decided to pull out of publishing, the company was sold on to Robert Maxwell the now discredited media tycoon, and the magazines faced their darkest days. Queen Anne's Gate was abandoned. The Maxwell system of incompetence, greed and pillage was not suited to producing high quality publications for sale. For instance any surplus made by any of the firms in the ramshackle empire was nightly sucked off electronically to Maxwell's central pot, so investment was impossible. Standards and pagination were reduced almost monthly and circulation fell disastrously.

Emap bought the AR and the AJ after the Maxwell crash and the new owners rescued the magazines from almost certain death, bringing desperately needed improvements in management and investment. We face the future with new confidence.

1 This seems strange as there were more paid-for periodicals in the field than there are today: The British Architect, Building News, The Architect and the redoubtable long standing Builder.

2 One fortieth of a pound at a time when a decent professional income was [pounds]1000. The Journal was 1d a week.

3 Morgan, initial executive editor of the Journal, had left after a nasty disagreement with his partners when he set up his own paper Architecture, which he had promoted in the Journal's pages. His venture failed, but must have made the others aware that a monthly about the art of architecture might be needed.

4 Women's Royal Naval Service.