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The original Pantechnicon was a huge complex of warehouses, wine vaults, and other storage facilities on Motcomb Street, in London's Belgravia. Built in 1830 and supposed to be fireproof, it was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1874. It seems originally to have been intended to be a bazaar, hence its name, literally "everything artistic," denoting that all sorts of manufactured wares were to be bought there. But it was its role as a furniture repository that brought it into the general language. Moving vans taking furniture there came to be known as "pantechnicon vans," and by the 1890s pantechnicon was a generic term for "moving van."
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