Around TownW1TPlatform to lobby: 3 min from Goodge Street
Fitzrovia escorts after the shops shut, from Great Titchfield Street to Newman Street
Fitzrovia has almost no shop windows. Walk up Great Titchfield Street in the afternoon and the ground floors are doorways, entryphones and a brass plate or two, with everything worth seeing upstairs where you cannot see it. For most of a century these streets were the wholesale end of the clothing trade, the rag trade: rails of samples, buyers in on an appointment, and nothing whatever for a passer by to buy.
Some of that went out to showrooms elsewhere and some of it is still behind the same doors, which is why the district empties at six rather than at nine. Fitzrovia escorts come to W1T after the trade has locked up, and five of the women on the list live within a few streets of it, just south across Oxford Street and just west of Great Portland Street.
Stations and lit lobbies
Walking minutes from the nearest platforms, and the hotels around Fitzrovia worth knowing by postcode. They are listed as landmarks, never as partners: any reputable hotel, serviced apartment or private address is welcome.
Nearest stations
- Goodge StreetNorthern3 min walk
- Tottenham Court RoadCentral, Northern, Elizabeth line6 min walk
- Oxford CircusBakerloo, Central, Victoria7 min walk
Hotels as landmarks
- W1T 1RJFitzrovia
- W1T 3NPFitzrovia
- W1T 3NGFitzrovia
- W1T 1PGFitzrovia
- W1B 1JAMarylebone
Who comes to Fitzrovia
Companions whose home districts sit nearest to Fitzrovia, so the ride over is short. Everyone in The Selection travels here on request.
Molly
Age 24Soho
Tiffany
Age 24Soho
Jasmin
Age 22Soho
Rosa
Age 25Marylebone
Samanta
Age 27Mayfair
Angelika
Age 24Mayfair
Liana
Age 28Marylebone
Luna
Age 22Mayfair
Selling upstairs, to buyers only
The wholesale clothing trade settled around Great Titchfield Street and never entirely left. It worked on appointments. A buyer for a chain of shops arrived, climbed a staircase, looked along a rail and ordered a season. Nothing was priced for the public and nothing needed a window, so the fronts are flat and the interest is all on the first floor.
You can read the trade off the buildings. Goods doors too wide for a house. Hoist beams over upper openings. Repeated windows floor after floor, put there for daylight over a cutting table. A dozen buzzers on one frame. Margaret Street and Little Portland Street carry the same grammar.
Where London went to buy a car
Great Portland Street was the motor trade's street. Through the first half of the twentieth century its ground floors held car showrooms one after another, plate glass and a polished floor and a single car standing in the middle, with the coachbuilders' offices and the trade press above. That is the exception to the rule about windows here, because a car was sold by being looked at.
The showrooms went the way of the rag trade and the buildings are offices now, but the proportions give them away: a ground floor much taller than anything above it, and an opening wide enough to drive through. Great Portland Street runs down the western edge.
A painter's showroom on Newman Street
Benjamin West, born in Pennsylvania and later President of the Royal Academy, lived and worked at 14 Newman Street from the 1770s until his death, and built galleries behind the house to hang his own pictures. People came to look, and some came to buy. It was a showroom with a painter attached.
Nothing of those galleries is left to see, but the habit stayed put. The difference here between a studio, an office and a showroom has never been worth arguing about.
The street that lost its church
Wells Street had a Victorian church, St Andrew's, well known in its day for its music. In the 1930s it was taken down and re-erected in Kingsbury, out in north west London, where a growing suburb needed a church and central London had a spare one.
It is the plainest illustration of what this ground does with its buildings: if a use stops paying, the building changes or it goes. That is also why there is no obvious centre here and no high street to stroll down. The plan was never about frontage.
Behind the backs of Oxford Street
Eastcastle Street runs along the southern edge, directly behind the big blocks, narrow, shaded, full of goods entrances, small galleries and showrooms. It is the service side of a shopping street, and it has always been quiet at the wrong moments.
One of those moments came in 1952, when a Post Office van was ambushed on it at night and a very large sum taken. Nobody was ever convicted. The story explains the character: an address behind the shops, outside everybody's sight lines, which is precisely why the galleries like it.
After the buzzers stop
Goodge Street station is a three minute walk, on the Northern line. The district's own hours matter more than the platforms: the trade keeps office time, the offices empty between six and seven, and from then until late these streets belong to whoever is still out in them.
Write to Clementine with the address, the hour and the length of the evening. Back comes one name and one price; the building and the number are checked once; after that it is usually an hour or so before the door, and she writes down the minute your companion set out. The fee goes into your companion's own hand as she comes in, and from £250 an hour it covers her time and her company and nothing else, the ride to any door inside Zones 1 and 2 already absorbed and anything past the Zone 2 boundary costed as one line in the confirmation before you say yes, exactly as the rates sets it down.
Three ways out of W1T
Tottenham Court Road closes the eastern side, a wide road with a quite different trade on it. Oxford Circus lies off the south western corner, and its station is a seven minute walk. Cross Oxford Street to the south and the business turns from wholesale to retail inside one pavement's width, where the shops keep proper windows and proper hours.
Fitzrovia, asked
Because the trade here sold to buyers and not to the public. An order was placed upstairs by appointment, so a window would have been wasted frontage. Look up instead: the good glass is on the first and second floors.
It was, for much of the last century, and it was the street you came to if you were buying a car in London. The tall ground floors and wide openings are obvious once you know what they were cut for.
Benjamin West, an American who became President of the Royal Academy. He lived at 14 Newman Street from the 1770s and built galleries behind the house for his own pictures. Nothing of them is left to see.
It was taken down in the 1930s and rebuilt in Kingsbury, in north west London, where a new suburb needed one. Central London had the spare building and the suburb had the congregation.
Not a great deal, and that is rather the point of the place. The trade streets keep office hours, so a Saturday is for walking them empty. Escorts in Fitzrovia are booked for weekend evenings all the same, and Oxford Street runs along the bottom if the afternoon wants shops.
Read before you go
- 5 min readCharlotte Street after six: Fitzrovia's restaurant row, read by moodFitzrovia's restaurant row runs from white-tablecloth rooms to loud, clever newcomers. How to choose by mood, where to drink first, and how a Charlotte Street evening is paced.
- 5 min readFront row at the pass: counter seats and kitchen tables north of Oxford StreetWatching the pass at work turns dinner into a shared show. The counters and kitchen tables north of Oxford Street, what they ask of an evening, and why they suit two people.
Lights on in Fitzrovia
Write the hotel or street in Fitzrovia, the time and how long. Inside Zones 1 and 2 the ride over costs nothing.