Piccadilly Circus

Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster. It was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. In this context, a circus, from the Latin word meaning "circle", is a round open space at a street junction.^[1]

The Circus now connects Piccadilly, Regent Street,

It is surrounded by several notable buildings, including the London Pavilion and Criterion Theatre. Underneath the plaza is Piccadilly Circus Underground station, part of the London Underground system.

History

Piccadilly Circus connects to Piccadilly, a thoroughfare whose name first appeared in 1626 as Piccadilly Hall, named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, or piccadillies, a term used for various kinds of collars. The street was known as Portugal Street in 1692 in honour of Catherine of Braganza, the queen consort of King Charles II but was known as Piccadilly by 1743. Piccadilly Circus was created in 1819, at the junction with Regent Street, which was then being built under the planning of John Nash on the site of a house and garden belonging to a Lady Hutton; the intersection was then known as Regent Circus South (just as Oxford Circus was known as Regent Circus North) and it did not begin to be known as Piccadilly Circus until the mid 1880s, with the rebuilding of the Regent Street Quadrant and the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. In the same period the circus lost its circular form.^[3]

The junction has been a very busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of

Piccadilly Circus tube station was opened on 10 March 1906, on the Bakerloo line, and on the Piccadilly line in December of that year. In 1928, the station was extensively rebuilt to handle an increase in traffic. The junction's first electric advertisements appeared in 1910, and, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the facade of the London Pavilion. Electric street lamps, however, did not replace the gas ones until 1932.^[4] The circus became a one-way roundabout on 19 July 1926.^[5] Traffic lights were first installed on 3 August 1926.

During World War II many servicemen's clubs in the West End served American soldiers based in Britain. So many prostitutes roamed the area approaching the soldiers that they received the nickname "Piccadilly Commandos", and both

Illuminated signs

Piccadilly Circus was surrounded by illuminated advertising hoardings on buildings, starting in 1908 with a

The earliest signs used

• Coca-Cola has had a sign at Piccadilly Circus since 1954.^[16] In September 2003, the previous digital projector board and the site that had been occupied by Nescafé was replaced with a state-of-the-art LED video display that curves round with the building. Before Nescafé, a neon advertisement for Foster's occupied the spot from 1987 until 1999, and from 1978 to 1987 it was used by Philips Electronics. For several months in 2002, the Nescafé sign was replaced by a sign featuring the quote "Imagine all the people living life in peace" by Beatle John Lennon. This was paid for by his widow Yoko Ono, who spent an estimated £150,000 to display an advert at this location.^[17] Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite and Vitamin Water have all been advertised in the space.
• Hyundai Motors sign launched on 29 September 2011.^[18] It replaced a sign for Sanyo which had occupied the space since around early 1988 (slightly modified in 2004), the last to be run using neon lights rather than Hyundai's computerised LED screen. Earlier Sanyo signs with older logos had occupied the position since 1978, although these were only half the size of the later space.^[19]
• McDonald's added its sign in 1987, replacing one for BASF. The sign was changed from neon to LED in 2001. A bigger, brighter screen was installed by Daktronics in 2008.^[20]

  

• Samsung added its sign in November 1994,^[21] the space having been previously occupied by Canon Inc. (1978–84) and Panasonic (1984–94). The sign was changed from neon to LED in summer 2005. The screen was upgraded and improved in autumn 2011.
• L'Oreal, Hunter Original and eBay both had signs in the Piccadilly circus billboards since October 2017.^[22][a]
• One Piccadilly, the highest resolution of all the LED displays was installed by Daktronics, in late 2013, underneath the Samsung and McDonald's signs. It allowed other companies to advertise for both short- and long-term leases, increasing the amount of advertising space but using the same screen for multiple brands. Prior to this an earlier, smaller LED screen called Piccadilly Lite occupied the space from 3 December 2007 to 2013. The space has also been occupied by
  Budweiser
  (2003–07).
• The Curve, a similar space to One Piccadilly, was added in 2015, replacing a space previously occupied by Schweppes (1920–61), BP (1961–67), Cinzano (1967–78), Fujifilm (1978–86), Kodak (1986–90) and TDK (1990–2015).^[23] Burberry was using the space as of December 2015.^{[citation needed]}
• LG was added in February 2007 on the roof of Coventry House, which diagonally faces Piccadilly Circus.^[24] Its sign is a large LED video advertising display for LGE, the British arm of the South Korean electronics group. The new display also incorporates a scrolling ticker of Sky News headlines. Before LG, Vodafone
  had a neon sign installed on that spot, which displayed both its logo and personal messages that could be submitted on a special website and displayed at a certain time and date.

On special occasions the lights are switched off, such as the deaths of Winston Churchill in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. On 21 June 2007, they were switched off for one hour as part of the Lights Out London campaign.^[25]

Other companies and brands that have had signs on the site were Bovril, Volkswagen, Max Factor, Wrigley's Spearmint, Skol, Air India and Gold Flake (as Will's Gold Flake Cigarettes).^[26]

Since 2020, the

At the south-eastern side of the Circus, moved after

The

The theatre was designed by Thomas Verity and opened as a theatre on 21 March 1874, although original plans were for it to become a concert hall. In 1883, it was forced to close to improve ventilation and to replace gaslights with electric lights and was reopened the following year. The theatre closed in 1989 and was extensively renovated, reopening in October 1992.

London Pavilion

On the north-eastern side of Piccadilly Circus, on the corner between Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street, is the London Pavilion. The first building bearing the name was built in 1859 and was a music hall. In 1885, Shaftesbury Avenue was built through the former site of the Pavilion, and a new London Pavilion was constructed, which also served as a music hall. In 1924 electric billboards were erected on the side of the building.

In 1934, the building underwent significant structural alteration and was converted into a

Lillywhites is a major retailer of sporting goods located on the corner of the circus and Lower Regent Street, next to the Shaftesbury fountain. It moved to its present site in 1925. Lillywhites is popular with tourists, and they regularly offer sale items, including international football jerseys up to 90% off. Nearby Fortnum & Mason is often considered to be part of the Piccadilly Circus shopping area and is known for its expansive food hall.^[30]

County Fire Office

Dominating the north side of the circus, on the corner of Glasshouse Street, is the County Fire Office building, with a statue of Britannia on the roof. The original building was designed by John Nash as the extreme southern end of his Regent Street Quadrant. Its dramatic façade was clearly influenced by Inigo Jones's old Somerset House. Although Robert Abraham was the County Fire Insurance Company's architect, it was probably Nash who was instrumental in choosing the design.^[31] In 1924 the old County Fire Office was demolished and replaced with a similar but much coarser building designed by Reginald Blomfield, but retaining the statue of Britannia.^[32] During the London Blitz it was the only building in the Circus to be damaged, with a few window panes blown out.^[33] The building is Grade II listed.^[34]

Underground station and the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines

The Piccadilly Circus station on the London Underground is located directly beneath Piccadilly Circus itself, with entrances at every corner. It is one of the few stations which have no associated buildings above ground and is fully underground. The below ground concourse and subway entrances are Grade II listed.^[35]

The station is on the Piccadilly line between Green Park and Leicester Square, and the Bakerloo line between Charing Cross and Oxford Circus.

Demonstrations

The Circus' status as a high-profile public space has made it the destination for numerous political demonstrations, including the

• Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
• Cambridge Circus, London
• Chinawhite (nightclub)
• Oxford Circus
• Punto Obelisco (Obelisk Point, Buenos Aires)
• Shaftesbury Avenue
• Shibuya Crossing, noted public space and crossroads in Tokyo
• Times Square, a noted road junction and public space in New York
• Yonge–Dundas Square, a major public square with commercial signage in Toronto

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

Books

• ISBN 1-873590-04-0
  .
• Harris, C. M. What's in a name? The origins of the names of all stations in current use on the London Underground and Docklands Light rail with their opening dates. Midas Books and London Transport, fourth edition, 2001.
  ISBN 1-85414-241-0
  .
• Lange, D. The Queen's London: A Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis. Cassell and Company, London, 1896.
• Marshall, Prince Wheels of London; The story of London's street transport.
  ISBN 0-7230-0068-9
  .
• Mills, Anthony David Dictionary of London Place Names.
  ISBN 0-19-280106-6
  .
• ISBN 0-14-071012-4
  .
• Piccadilly Circus: From Controversy to Reconstruction. Greater London Council, 1980.
  ISBN 0-7168-1145-6
  .

Articles and websites

• Hadley, P. "Piccadilly Circus, How a typical 1906 London tube station was built", Underground News 412, April 1996.
• Jacob, S. "Review: Piccadilly Circus", Icon Magazine, November 2003.
• "London lights out for environment", BBC News, 22 June 2007

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Piccadilly Circus.

• Piccadilly.london Archived 19 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine Things to do in Piccadilly area
• Theatre History
• This is London theatre guide to Criterion Theatre
• Metallurgical study of the statue of Eros following restoration in 1990
• Map from www.streetmap.co.uk Archived 14 October 2004 at the Wayback Machine
• Aerial photo from maps.google.com
• London Landscape TV episode (5 mins) about Piccadilly Circus
• The Lights of Piccadilly