VicLondon-Mayfair
Mayfair, the West End
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Sandwiched between Whitehall and Marylebone is Mayfair. It is the heart of London’s social life, a district of theatres and art galleries, high-priced shops and restaurants, and gentlemen’s clubs. At lunchtime, the men who govern England can be found in the clubs and pubs, and in the evening, the rich and powerful parade through Mayfair in their ne carriages and their best attire, attending the theatrical offerings.
The Criterion, the Royalty, and the Palace Theatre all crowd the area around Piccadilly Street offering selections from opera to light musical, Shakespeare to the latest drivel, the stage is set and “bums are in seats.” More fashionable is the St. James, on the road of the same name, or Her Majesty’s on Haymarket at Pall Mall. On Leicester Square, there is the Alhambra, which offers vaudeville and musical entertainment into the early morning hours for a less discriminating audience.
The shops of Piccadilly Circus, Oxford and Regent Streets, and Tottenham Court Road are here, including the original department stores of the 1850s. It was in London that the rst plate glass window fronts made their debut in the 1780s. This allowed customers to “window shop”, by perusing what the merchant had available. Shops with names like Fortnum (dealing in household goods), Hugh Mason (grocer), and Hatchard’s bookshop, as well as the clothiers of Burlington Arcade, draw thousands every day. The products vary in quality with the purveyor, but all are of good quality or higher. As William Whitely (owner of one of the trading emporiums here) says, “We can supply anything from a pin to an elephant.”
In fact, these mammoth stores are drawing more and more business, forcing older shops in the City to close down as people migrate from the centre into the southern and western neighbourhoods. On the outskirts of Mayfair (technically on the Brompton side) is Harrods. Positioned near Queen’s Gardens and Knightsbridge on Brompton Road, it was a small four story shop, with different goods grouped into departments to make shopping easier and faster. In the 1890s, a massive expansion project began, and Harrods built around the original store, expanding its shopping oor by an order of magnitude. As Harrods bought up more of the land around it, the store would continue to grow to ll most of the block it was on.
As if this wide selection of entertainments is not enough, there is also Green Park and St. James Park (with its Queen’s Gardens) – less popular than Hyde Park but more exclusive.
