Maida Vale
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- for the suburb of Perth, Western Australia, see Maida Vale, Western Australia
Maida Vale is a road in west London, and a residential district (also covering Maida Hill) surrounding it in the City of Westminster. The road is the section of Edgware Road (or A5) from Kilburn, near Kilburn High Road station running south-east, past Maida Vale tube station, through the district known as Maida Vale. Just to the east of Maida Vale is St John's Wood and Lord's Cricket Ground. When it meets St. John's Wood Road, Maida Vale reverts to the name Edgware Road.
The district acquired its name from the Hero of Maida, a public house which opened on the Edgware Road soon after the Battle of Maida, 1806. The area is mostly residential, and often extremely affluent, consisting of many large Edwardian mansion houses. It encompasses the Paddington Basin, a junction of three canals with many houseboats. This area is also known as Little Venice.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Maida Vale was a predominantly Jewish district, and the area contains the 1896 Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue (a Grade II listed building) and headquarters of the British Sephardi community. The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, lived within sight of this synagogue on Warrington Crescent.[1] The pioneer of modern computing, Alan Turing was born a few hundred yards further down this same road.[2]
Maida Vale is also home to a BBC Recording and Broadcast Studio, used primarily by BBC Radio 1. The studio was also home to John Peel's Peel Sessions, a regular slot in which a current popular band would play a set exclusively for the show. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was based here from 1958 until the Workshop was shut down in 1998. Their pioneering Delaware synthesiser took its name from the studio's Delaware Road address. The studio is nicknamed "Maida Vegas" by Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe when he uses the studio for his show.
Maida Vale tube station was opened on June 6, 1915, on the Bakerloo Line.
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- Part of the movie, "A Fish Called Wanda," was filmed in Maida Vale.
- The Canadian post-rock combo Godspeed You! Black Emperor named their Peel session on January 19, 1999 "Hung Over as the Queen in Maida Vale".
- The Alfred Hitchcock film, "Dial M for Murder", supposedly takes place in Maida Vale; the famous phone call is made to the Maida Vale Police Precinct
