Familiar firm on the move

Press, 28 September 1987, Page 10

Familiar firm on the move

After 58 years of trading in Hereford Street, the McKenzie and Willis furniture and furnishing store is moving. The company had bought out A. J. Whites about five years ago and the move would allow McKenzie and Willis to concentrate its business on one site, at the comer of Tuam and High Streets, said Mr Allan Willis. McKenzie and Willis was established in 1906 by Mr Allan Willis’s father, Joseph. It began trading in the Royal Exchange Building in Cathedral Square, where the Regent theatre is now, but moved to what was then the Queen’s Theatre in August, 1929. "It was very sad to move from next to the Post Office in the Square to Hereford Street,” said Mr Willis. "Hereford Street was a backwater in those days.”

The onset of the economic depression of the 1930 s made life very difficult for the company in its new home.

The McKenzie and Willis building has now been sold to Brierley Investments, said Mr Willis.

The company did not need two central city sites, and the Tuam Street site, which has only recently changed its name from A. J. Whites to McKenzie and Willis, had more floor space, and better provision for customer parking, he said. Mr Willis is semiretired now, and his sons, John and Paul, run the private company. Mr Joseph Willis and Mr McKenzie parted company in 1914 but the name was retained. McKenzie and Willis will trade from its Hereford Street site for the last time on Saturday.