Fitzrovia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fitzrovia is an area of central London, just north of the West End. It is an informally designated area lying partly in the London Borough of Camden (in the east) and partly in the City of Westminster (in the west). It is bounded to the north by Euston Road, to the east by the Tottenham Court Road, to the south by Oxford Street and to the west by Great Portland Street (or alternatively Portland Place).
Fitzrovia's name is obscure compared to those of most central London areas, including its neighbours such as Soho to the south and Bloomsbury to the east. The area was unnamed until the mid-twentieth century[citation needed] when, in the light of the area's burgeoning reputation as the home of bohemian and literary London, it adopted the name of its most renowned public house and literary salon, the Fitzroy Tavern. There have been repeated failed attempts to rename the area in the New York fashion, Noho (north of Soho)[citation needed].
The northern part of the area was first developed in the 18th century by the Hon. Charles FitzRoy, (later Baron Southampton), who purchased the Manor of Tottenhall and built Fitzroy Square, to which he gave his name. The square is the most distinguished of the original architectural features of the district, having been designed in part by Robert Adam. The south-western area was first developed by the Duke of Newcastle, establishing Oxford Market, now the area around Market Place. By the beginning of the 19th century this part of London was heavily built upon, severing one of the main routes through it, Marylebone Passage, into the tiny remnant that remains today on Wells Street, opposite what would have been the Tiger public house - now a rubber clothing emporium.
Much of Fitzrovia was developed by minor landowners, and this led to a predominance of small and irregular streets, in comparison with neighbouring districts like Marylebone and Bloomsbury, which were dominated by one or two landowners, and were thus developed more schematically, with stronger grid patterns and a greater number of squares. Unlike its neighbours to the south, east and west, Fitzrovia never had a spell as a fashionable residential district.
The most prominent feature of the area is the BT Tower, which is one of London's tallest buildings.
Contents |
[edit] Business in Fitzrovia
In its early days it was largely an area of well-to-do tradesmen and craft workshops, with Edwardian mansion blocks built by the Quakers to allow theatre employees to be close to work. Nowadays property uses are diverse, but Fitzrovia is still well known for its fashion industry, now mainly comprising wholesalers and HQs of the likes of FCUK. New media outfits have replaced the photographic studios of the 1970s-90s, often housed in warehouses built to store the changing clothes of their original industry - fashion. Charlotte Street was for many years the home the British advertising industry and is now known for its many and diverse restaurants, Today the district still houses the illustrious Saatchi & Saatchi and TBWA advertising agencies, although the modular ex-BT building occupied by McCann-Erickson was demolished in 2006 after they moved to an art deco home in Bloomsbury.
A number of television production and post-production companies are based in the area. Nickelodeon and CNN Europe also headquartered in the area. ITN used to be based at 48 Wells Street during the 1980s, with its Factual Department still housed on Mortimer Street, and rival Channel 4 was briefly situated on Charlotte Street. London's Time Out magazine and City Guide is created and edited on Tottenham Court Road on the eastern border of Fitzrovia.
A number of structural engineering consultants are based in offices on Newman Street and the world headquarters of Arup is on Fitzroy Street. There were once many hospitals (including Middlesex Hospital, which closed in 2006, and St Luke's Hospital, which is now a home for retired clergy). A handful of minor embassies (El Salvador, Mozambique, Turkmenistan and Croatia) nestle amongst the many and varied public houses. Retail use spills into parts of Fitzrovia from Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, which are two of the principal shopping streets in central London.
[edit] Fitzrovia and the arts
Fitzrovia was a notable artistic and bohemian centre from a period dating roughly from the mid 1920s until the mid-to-late 1950s. Amongst those known to have lived locally and frequented public houses in the area such as the Fitzroy Tavern and the Wheatsheaf are Augustus John, Quentin Crisp, Dylan Thomas, Aleister Crowley, the racing tipster Prince Monolulu, Nina Hamnett, and George Orwell. Another pub in the area, the Newman Arms, features in Orwell's novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Keep the Aspidistra Flying and in the Michael Powell film Peeping Tom. George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf lived at different times in the same house in Fitzroy Square. Ian McEwan lives in Fitzroy Square and set his novel Saturday in the area. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man was published during his residence at 154 New Cavendish Street, in reply to Edmund Burke (author of Reflections on the Revolution in France), who lived at 18 Charlotte Street.
Chartist meetings were hosted in the area, some attended by Karl Marx, who is known to have been to venues at Charlotte Street, Tottenham Street and Rathbone Place. The area became a ganglion of Chartist activities after the Reform Act 1832 and was host to a number of working men's clubs.
The UFO Club, home to Pink Floyd during their spell as the house band of psychedelic London, was held in the basement of 31 Tottenham Court Road on the eastern border of Fitzrovia. Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix also played at the Speakeasy on Margaret Street and Bob Dylan debuted in London at the King & Queen pub on Foley Street. Oxford Street's 100 Club is a major hot-bed for music from the Sixties to the present day, and has roots in 1970s Britain's burgeoning Punk rock movement. The rock band Coldplay formed in Ramsay Hall, a University College London accommodation on Maple Street in Fitzrovia.
Fitzrovia is also the location of Pollock's Toy Museum, home to erstwhile popular Toy Theatre, at 1 Scala Street.
[edit] Transport
Fitzrovia is served by several London Underground stations:
- Great Portland Street tube station
- Goodge Street tube station
- Oxford Circus tube station
- Tottenham Court Road tube station
- Warren Street tube station
[edit] Nearby areas
- Bloomsbury to the east
- Covent Garden to the south-east
- Soho to the south
- Mayfair to the south-west
- Marylebone to the west
- Euston to the north
[edit] External link
- Map of Fitzrovia and the surrounding districts - note that this widely used street atlas does not identify Fitzrovia as an area.
- Yahoo map of the area - a map that does specify Fitzrovia
