|
|
 |
| |
Use some local know-how to understand
our Fitzrovia
• I’M sorry, I’ve just got to have a rant. I’ve tried to suppress it, but my big mouth is getting the better of me. The subject? Noho v Fitzrovia (Look out Fitzrovia, here comes Noho, March 7).
Maybe I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but are Camden Council really that poor that they have to sell out all residents and businesses to the Candy brothers?
Do they have no morals, obligations or respect to the residents of Fitzrovia?
Why did they give planning permission in the first place to such a monstrosity of a building, then allow themselves to be sucked into the marketing ploy of the rebranding of Fitzrovia?
If nothing else I give the Candy brothers credit for their sheer gaul at trying to drop the Fitzrovia name. Money doesn’t really impress us locals.
We know Fitzrovia is now a trendy place to live, overtaking Islington on the property-value stakes.
We know how developers are itching to get their hands on our properties, as do we know we are not a little area known locally as “Noho”.
Fitzrovia to me means community, not money. Get that point in your corporate, young heads and you might just reconsider the name Noho to sound slightly tacky.
After all, as pointed out by Councillor Rebecca Hossack last week, the name Noho is only used by estate agents. Fitzrovia to me is best described from the book North Soho 999 by Paul Willetts. He writes of the Fitzroy Tavern: “Positioned on the far corner, it was a big, smoke-blackened, three-storey building with Dutch gables and a miniature onion dome.
“The windows were almost opaque, their surfaces decorated by swirling, acid-etched patterns.
“From outside, it was hard to see much of what was going on inside.
“Entering the Fitzroy at lunchtime, customers were greeted by a soothing buzz of conversation from the incongruous array of people who drank there: locals, students, artists, writers, actors, politicians and eccentrics.
“On the wall above the counter was a large clock, its case made from half a beer barrel. It had stopped at 11am on Armistace Day, 1918.
“Out of superstition, nobody had wound it since.”
This is how Fitzrovia should remain, in my opinion.
CHRIS HOWARD
Chair of 25 Gresse Street Residents Association |
 |
|
| |
| Your comments: |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
