Here's a walk that we undertook, in the interests of both an article and for a small amount of education, through Soho. At this point it is mostly just a photo essay. To begin with we made our point of embarkation (in this case from the number 55 bus) Central London's navigational Milion: Richard Seifert's Centre Point. Its name provided us with a suitable starting point, if somewhat ironic as apparently the right to build it came from providing a useful automobile junction being built underneath it. However with the proposed Crossrail works pedestrians may be able to claim this point back soon, as part of the increasingly walkable area of London.
Our first foray outward lead us through Chinatown, and in particular down those tiny streets inhabitated by a collapse of pallets and trolleys outside those small vegetable shops like the one above.
One of the first objectives on our trek was the Notre Dame de France church on Leicester Place, where an early 20th Century Beaux Arts concoction. It was of particular interest for the artworks inside: a mosaic by the Russian Boris Anrep (above) and a mural by Jean Cocteau, the polymathic French artist. Both Anrep and Cocteau are colossal figures in European intellectual culture and the audience they garnered on this Saturday morning was a little disappointing, so please make the pilgrimage.
We set back off into Soho heading West toward Golden Square. I spied this CCTV garlanded with coloured ribbon (presumably a vestige from some previous event), and found the anachronism pleasing and jolly.
Apparently London's first strip bar lies dormant and wanting, a sign of both the declining decadence and increasing commercialism of Soho.
A house on Broadwick Street which bore Canaletto when he moved to London to be closer to the English gentlemen who patronised his tireless views of Venice.
One of the major points on our journey was Nordic Bakery, a delightful (and delectable) eatery that oozed with good taste (real good taste not the faded romantic roccoco rubbish that passes for taste in near-east London). The detailing went from the Aalto chairs to the gravadlax, right down to the denim aprons on the typically blonde staff.
Our final objective and the one that marked the move from the quietening streets of Soho to the very quieted streets of Mayfair was Eero Saarinen's American Embassy. Or as we recently found, Eero Saarinen's soon to be ex-embassy (Kieran Timberlake's design for the new Vauxhall pad can be seen here). Which raises the interesting question of what this Grade II listed building will become when they move out. Perhaps just an office building, or some culturally mundane institution, but perhaps the US should use it (an example of an American bringing something great to Britain as an outpost for welcoming. An anti-embassy? Somewhere where we can learn that America is not just a lardy hillbilly state, and that it perhaps has something to discuss with the rest of the planet. This anti-embassy should be an outpost for all that is good that is American.
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