Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a district of central London, England, near the West End. Its eastern part is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urbanised in the 18th century. Its name was coined in the late 1930s by Tom Driberg.
It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail, education and healthcare, with no single activity dominating. The once bohemian area was home to writers such as Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Rimbaud. In 2016, The Sunday Times named it the best place to live in London.
Geography
Fitzrovia has never been an administrative unit, so has never had formal boundaries applied, but the local streets' somewhat gridlike pattern has lent itself to informal quadrangular definitions, with Euston Road to the north, Oxford Street to the south and Great Portland Street to the west. Some take Tottenham Court Road as the eastern boundary, but others prefer a wider interpretation, extending to the more easterly Gower Street. By these definitions, the area overlaps the long established and once formally defined districts of Marylebone in the City of Westminster, with the core area forming the south-west part of St Pancras in the London Borough of Camden. If the eastern boundary is taken to extend beyond Tottenham Court Road and to also extend south of Torrington Place, then the area overlaps the historic boundaries of Bloomsbury.In 2014 Camden Council and Westminster City Council designated east and west areas as planning policy areas. Together these relate fairly closely to the wider interpretations described above.
Etymology
Fitzrovia is named after either Fitzroy Square or the Fitzroy Tavern, a public house on the corner of Charlotte Street and Windmill StreetThe name "Fitzrovia" came into use in the late 1930s among an artistic, bohemian circle that that had begun using the Fitzroy Tavern and surrounding area as a cheap northerly alternative to the West End. After a 1930 mention,
an early recorded use in print occurs in the William Hickey gossip column, written by Tom Driberg MP, in the Daily Express in 1940. The writer and dandy Julian MacLaren-Ross recalled in his Memoirs of the Forties that Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu, aka "Tambi", editor of Poetry London, had invented and used the name "Fitzrovia". By the time Julian Maclaren-Ross met Tambimuttu in the early 1940s this literary group had moved away from the Fitzroy Tavern, which had become a victim of its own success, and were hanging out in the lesser-known Wheatsheaf and other places in Rathbone Place and Gresse Street. Maclaren-Ross recalls Tambimuttu saying: "Now we go to the Black Horse, the Burglar's Rest, the Marquess of Granby, The Wheatsheaf... in Fitzrovia." Maclaren-Ross replied: "I know the Fitzroy", to which Tambimuttu said: "Ah, that was in the Thirties, now they go to other places. Wait and see." Tambimuttu then took him on a pub crawl. The name, largely forgotten after the avant-garde set moved out in the late 1940s, re-appeared in the 1970s, with its use having waxed and waned since.
History
The core area of Fitzrovia has its roots in the ancient manor of Tottenham Court – first recorded as Þottanheale, from a charter from around AD 1000. The manor was subsequently described as Totehele in the Domesday Book of 1086, Totenhale in 1184 and Totenhale Court by 1487. Tottenham Court formed the south-western part of the parish and later borough of St Pancras.The Fitzroy Tavern was named after Charles FitzRoy, who purchased the Manor of Tottenham Court and built Fitzroy Square, to which he gave his name; nearby Fitzroy Street also bears 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 who established Oxford Market, now the area around Market Place. By the beginning of the 19th century, this part of London was heavily built upon.
In addition to Fitzroy Square and nearby Fitzroy Street, numerous locations are named for the FitzRoy family and Devonshire/Portland family, both significant local landowners. Charles FitzRoy was the grandson of Charles FitzRoy, 2nd Duke of Grafton, hence Grafton Way and Grafton Mews. William Bentinck, 2nd Duke of Portland and his wife Margaret Harley lend their names to Portland Place, Great Portland Street and Harley Street. Margaret Harley was daughter of Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, for whom Oxford Street and Mortimer Street are named. The Marquessate of Titchfield is a subsidiary title to the Dukedom of Portland, hence Great Titchfield Street. William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland married Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire, and they lend their names to New Cavendish Street, Cavendish Square and Devonshire Street. The name of the Grafton family's country estate is Euston Hall, in Euston, Suffolk, the origin of the names of Euston Station and Euston Road.
The area became a focus of Chartist activities after the Reform Act 1832. Karl Marx attended some Chartist events, including meetings held at Charlotte Street, Tottenham Street and Rathbone Place. The area was host to a number of working men's clubs including The Communist Club at 49 Tottenham Street. University College Hospital was opened, as "North London Hospital", in 1834.
Two of London's oldest surviving residential walkways are in Fitzrovia. Colville Place and the pre-Victorian Middleton Buildings are in the old London style of a way. When the parishes of St Pancras and Marylebone became boroughs in 1900, minor modifications were made to the ancient boundaries, whose pre-urban origin meant it cut awkwardly across the built environment in some places. The western half of Charlotte Place, the western part of part of Charlotte Street and the eastern half of Rathbone Street were transferred to Marylebone, despite these streets' long history within St Pancras and close integration with the urban grain of the St Pancras streets to the east.
The area's most prominent feature is the BT Tower, Cleveland Street, one of London's tallest buildings. It was open to the public until an IRA bomb exploded in the revolving restaurant in 1971. Another notable modern building is the YMCA Indian Student Hostel on Fitzroy Square, one of the few surviving buildings by Ralph Tubbs.
21st century
The Middlesex Hospital, which closed in 2005, covered an extensive part of the area, and its redevelopment as Fitzroy Place was completed in 2016. The site had initially been acquired by the property developer Candy and Candy, which demolished the existing buildings to make way for a housing and retail development. The Candy brothers' scheme, which was unpopular with local people, failed during the 2008 financial crisis.Stanhope plc took over the project and proposed a short-term project that would allow residents to create temporary allotments on the site until a new development was started. But in 2010, the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which had a controlling interest in the site, announced its intention to sell the site on the open market and cancelled the allotments project. In July 2010, the site passed into the ownership of Aviva Investments and Exemplar Properties. A planning application for the new Middlesex Hospital project was submitted in August 2011 and it was understood that Exemplar would commence the redevelopment works in January 2012. The new Middlesex Hospital development was completed in 2014.
Separately, Derwent London plc acquired of property in the area to add to its existing Fitzrovia portfolio after a merger with London Merchant Securities. The company then held about of property over more than 30 sites in Fitzrovia. In November 2009 the company announced plans to transform part of Fitzrovia into a new retail destination with cafes and restaurants.
Derwent London created the Fitzrovia Partnership, a then-business partnership with Arup, Make Architects and City of London Corporation, with the support of the London Borough of Camden. In July 2010 Derwent London showcased plans for the redevelopment of the Saatchi & Saatchi building in Charlotte Street. Plans produced by Make Architects proposed increasing the density of the site by 50 per cent and adding shops, cafes and a small open space.
Today, over 128,000 people work within 0.5 miles of Fitzrovia, according to the Fitzrovia Partnership's .
Georgian workhouse
Objection was raised by the local community over plans announced in July 2010 to demolish and redevelop the site of an 18th-century building in Cleveland Street, originally a poorhouse for the parish of St Paul's, Covent Garden, and later the Cleveland Street Workhouse.Arts
Fitzrovia was a notable artistic and bohemian centre from roughly from the mid-1920s to the present day. 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. The Newman Arms on Rathbone Street, features in Orwell's novels Keep the Aspidistra Flying and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as well as the Michael Powell film Peeping Tom.Thomas Paine's Rights of Man was published during his residence at 154 New Cavendish Street, in reply to Edmund Burke, who lived at 18 Charlotte Street. Artists Richard Wilson and John Constable lived at 76 Charlotte Street at various times. During the 19th century, painters Walter Sickert, Ford Madox Brown, Thomas Musgrave Joy and Whistler lived in Fitzroy Square. George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf also resided at different times on the square, at number 29. The French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine lived for a time in Howland Street in a house on a site now occupied by offices. Modernist painter Wyndham Lewis lived on Percy Street. The house of Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester on Tottenham Street now shows a commemorative blue plaque. 97 Mortimer Street, where H. H. Munro lived, now has a blue plaque commemorating his time there. Colin MacInnes author of Absolute Beginners also resided on Tottenham Street, at number 28, with his publisher Martin Green and his wife Fiona Green.
X. Trapnel, the dissolute novelist in Anthony Powell's Books Do Furnish a Room, spends much of his time holding forth in Fitzrovia pubs. In Saul Bellow's The Dean's December, the eponym, Corde dines at the Étoile, Charlotte Street, on his trips to London, and thinks he "could live happily ever after on Charlotte Street"; Ian McEwan quotes this in Saturday. McEwan lived in Fitzroy Square, and his novel takes place in the area.
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. Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix also played at the Speakeasy on Margaret Street and Bob Dylan made his London debut at the King & Queen pub on Foley Street. Oxford Street's 100 Club is a major hot-bed for music from the 1960s to the present day, and has roots in 1970s Britain's burgeoning Punk rock movement. The band Coldplay formed in Ramsay Hall, a University College London accommodation on Maple Street. Boy George lived in a squat in Carburton Street in 1981 prior to his success and Neil Howson of Age of Chance lived in Cleveland Street around the same time.
Fitzrovia was also the location of Pollock's Toy Museum, home to erstwhile Toy Theatre, at 1 Scala Street.
At the back of Pollocks and in the next block was the site in 1772 of the Scala Theatre, Tottenham Street – then known as the Cognoscenti Theatre – but it had many names over history: the King's Concert Rooms, the New Theatre, the Regency Theatre, the West London Theatre, the Queen's Theatre, the Fitzroy Theatre, the Prince of Wales and the Royal Theatre until its demolition in 1903 when the Scala Theatre was built on the site for Frank Verity and modelled on La Scala in Milan. It was home to music hall, ballet and pantomime. Before its demolition in 1969, to make way for the office block and hotel that exists now, it was used inside for the filming in 1964 of the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night, the Mr Universe World competitions, and Sotheby's Auction in 1968 of the Diaghilev costumes and curtains. It was also briefly in the 1970s, in the basement of the office block, the site of the Scala Cinema and later still of Channel 4 Television. The branch of Bertorelli's Italian Restaurant on Charlotte Street was prominently featured in the film Sliding Doors. Guy Ritchie more recently made RocknRolla using Charlotte Mews.
The Fitzrovia Chapel, in Pearson Square, is a Grade II* listed building which hosts exhibitions throughout the year. Stephen Friedman Gallery, Erskine, Hall and Coe and the photographer Richard Ansett have shown at the chapel. The chapel is also used for weddings and fashion shows.