The Tamesis
Ask any unsuspecting tourist where Fitzrovia is on the London map and they’re likely to give you the most confused look. But those who were previously skeptical of the season – especially Londoners who thought it was an afterthought – missed the boat.
Central London offers the best of all worlds. The borough of Fitzrovia is just minutes from the chaos of Oxford Street and the glitz of Shaftesbury Avenue, London’s West End’s main theater strip, but it also offers visitors to the British capital one thing that no other borough does: the chance to experience quaint urban “country life” in the heart of one of the world’s largest metropolises.
Like New York neighborhoods like the West Village and SoHo, Fitzrovia has always been a center of counterculture. As a historic bohemian mecca, it was a hotspot of literary thought and artistic experimentation – George Bernard Shaw, Quentin Crisp, George Orwell and Dylan Thomas all lived here – and thanks to its academic credentials, with six university campuses spread across its leafy Georgian terraces, it remains a beacon for young people thinking outside the box. It is now one of London’s major creative business hotspots, home to a variety of advertising, PR, media and film agencies – including Netflix.
If you think London has a bit of an image problem at the moment, or at least find popular luxury hotel enclaves like Mayfair, Belgravia and Knightsbridge a bit lethargic, then Fitzrovia is your tonic. In this parallel universe, you’re in the land of independent brands, where stylish boutiques and forward-thinking stores – from Labstore, stocking the latest Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto collections, to Margaret Howell, selling reliably British classics – trump the grandeur of all Bond Street’s high-end fashion flagships.
But why exactly is Fitzrovia having a moment like this? You can attribute at least some of that buzz to the arrival of a new hotel, The Newman, opening this month. (The block is a secluded spot on the corner of Newman Street, a short walk from the Byzantine splendor of Fitzrovia Church and the lively bars and restaurants of Charlotte Street.) The 81-room Art Deco hotel is the first for London-based hotel group Kinsfolk & Co, whose directors have worked at other beloved British hospitality institutions such as The Goring, frequented by the royal family, and The Beaumont in London. Beaumont). Mayfair. The building took three years to construct and has lived many lives, serving as a post office and the headquarters of a large public relations agency.
