Old signage like this is a reminder of how swiftly cities change. Actually if they don’t adapt they become fossilised tourist attractions or worse.
But I digress. No. 9 Wardour Street in 1798 was where Benjamin Smart’s gold and silver bullion business was based. The area had only been developed as recently as the Fire of London and this stretch was called Prince Street (after Prince Rupert) in 1798, not changing name to Wardour Street until the late 19th century. It really flourished in the 19th century when there were furniture makers (Thomas Sheraton lived here), tailors, jewellers, French chefs and other foreigners including Russian, Italian and Swiss immigrants. It must have been an agreeable cosmopolitan place.
It has only become Chinatown since the 1950s. The Chinese community had been based around Limehouse. You will remember Sherlock Holmes visiting opium dens there and mysterious Chinese seamen. But bombing in the war and then the attentions of developers drove the Chinese west to Soho, which was pretty scruffy and affordable then. It only received official recognition as Chinatown in 1985.
Or you could have set your piece to George Formby’s Chinese Laundry Blues, written in 1932, and set in Limehouse.
This piece is most interesting and the Love Theme from Chinatown is such a classic.Thank you Christopher.And thank you also for the reminder of Faye Dunaway as she is rarely mentioned now.(She’d not be too happy to hear this I’m sure…however..’I now live a very quiet life’ and that’s my excuse for everything these days).Though now in my 68th year circling the sun in my time I rarely saw movies such as Chinatown when they were originally released in 1960’s -1970’s.Time has been an excellent filter and some of these you kindly pull out of your Movie Hat have since become Hollywood Gold.We have aged in time together and the experience of watching these brilliant actors acting in their youth from this older person’s perspective is a bit like time travelling through two existences ,half a century or more apart.Enthralling.Thanks again