Langham Place is a short street in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...

central London Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local government. Its characteris ...

, England. Just north of

Oxford Circus Oxford Circus is a road junction connecting Oxford Street and Regent Street in the West End of London. It is also the entrance to Oxford Circus tube station. The junction opened in 1819 as part of the Regent Street development under John Nash, ...

, it connects

Portland Place Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London. Named after the Third Duke of Portland, the unusually wide street is home to BBC Broadcasting House, the Chinese and Polish embassies, the Royal Institute of British A ...

to the north with

Regent Street Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George, the Prince Regent (later George IV) and was laid out under the direction of the architect John Nash and James Burton. It runs from Waterloo Place ...

to the south in

London's West End The West End of London (commonly referred to as the West End) is a district of Central London, west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, in which many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buil ...

. It is, or was, the location of many significant public buildings, and gives its name to the Langham Place group, a circle of early women's rights activists.

Buildings

There are several major buildings on Langham Place, including

All Souls Church All Souls Church, All Soul's Chapel, and variations, may refer to: United Kingdom *Church of All Souls, Bolton *All Souls' Church, Halifax *All Souls Church, Hastings *All Souls' Church, Blackman Lane *All Souls Church, Langham Place * All Souls C ...

Broadcasting House Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main ...

, and the

Langham Hotel The Langham, London, is one of the largest and best known traditional-style grand hotels in London, England. It is situated in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place, London, Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. ...

Queen's Hall The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect Thomas Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it ...

and St. George's Hall were also here until their destruction during World War II. The area is associated with the architect John Nash, although all but one of his original buildings have been replaced.Regent Street History and Construction
. Starting from the north, significant buildings include:

Broadcasting House

Broadcasting House is the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

's headquarters. It was built in the 1930s in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style, designed by the architect

George Val Myer George Valentine S. Myer (1883, Hereford – 1959, London) was an English architect and portrait painter appointed by the British Broadcasting Corporation to design one of the first purpose built broadcast buildings in the world, Broadcasting H ...

. Several of the BBC's national radio stations broadcast from the building. The New Broadcasting House extension, home of the

BBC News Centre #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

, was built in 2005, and first used for broadcasting in 2013.

Langham Hotel

The Langham Hotel, on the west side of Langham Place, was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It is one of the largest and best known traditional

hotels in London This article describes the hotels in London, England. History Before the 19th century, there were few, if any, large hotels in London. British country landowners often lived in London for part of the year but they usually rented a house, if the f ...

All Souls Church

All Souls Church, just south of Broadcasting House, has a distinctive circular

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

topped with a stone

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

. Completed in 1823 and consecrated in 1824, All Souls is the only surviving building in the area that was designed by John Nash.

St. George's Hall

St. George's Hall was a theatre built in 1867 and closed in 1966. It could accommodate between 800 and 900 persons, or up to 1,500 persons including the galleries. The architect was John Taylor of Whitehall.History of the Hall from the Arthur Lloyd website
/ref> The hall was known for three decades for its presentation of the

German Reed Entertainments The German Reed Entertainments were founded in 1855 and operated by Thomas German Reed (1817–1888) together with his wife, Priscilla Horton, Priscilla German Reed (née Horton) (1818–1895). At a time when the theatre in London was se ...

alongside other musical works and lectures. After 1895, it was used for

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

, drama, magic shows, as the headquarters of the

London Academy of Music The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) is a drama school located in Hammersmith, London. It is the oldest specialist drama school in the British Isles and a founding member of the Federation of Drama Schools. LAMDA's Principal is ...

, and even as a skating rink. In 1933, it became a

broadcasting studio but was shut down after extensive damage from bombing in March 1943. The theatre was demolished in 1966, and the St Georges Hotel and Henry Wood House now stand on the site.

Queen's Hall

Queen's Hall was a

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

concert hall A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage that serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats. This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, dramatic theatres or convention centres that may ...

. It opened in 1893 but was destroyed by an

incendiary bomb Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, th ...

during

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

in 1941. It is best known for being where the

Promenade Concerts The BBC Proms or Proms, formally named the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts Presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hal ...

("Proms") were founded by Robert Newman, with Sir Henry J. Wood, in 1895.

Organisations

The Langham Place Group

The Langham Place group was a circle of like-minded women who gathered there, including

Helen Blackburn Helen Blackburn (25 May 1842 – 11 January 1903) was a feminist, writer and campaigner for women's rights, especially in the field of employment. Blackburn was an editor of the ''Englishwoman's Review'' magazine. She wrote books about women work ...

, a women's rights advocate who later served as editor of

The Englishwoman's Review ''The Englishwoman's Review'' was a feminism, feminist periodical published in England between 1866 and 1910. Until 1869 called in full ''The Englishwoman's Review: a journal of woman's work'', in 1870 (after a break in publication) it was renam ...

. The group was named after the address, 19 Langham Place, which was for a decade from the late 1850s also the office of the ''

English Woman's Journal The ''English Woman's Journal'' was a periodical dealing primarily with female employment and equality issues. It was established in 1858 by Barbara Bodichon, Matilda Mary Hays and Bessie Rayner Parkes. Published monthly between March 1858 a ...

''. Its premises included a reading room, a coffee shop, and meeting space for the initiatives which gathered around it, mainly to do with women's rights, access to higher education and wage work (e.g. the

Society for Promoting the Employment of Women The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW) was one of the earliest British women's organisations. The society was established in 1859 by Jessie Boucherett, Barbara Bodichon and Adelaide Anne Proctor to promote the training and emp ...

(S.P.E.W.).

Jessie Boucherett (Emilia) Jessie Boucherett (November 1825 – 18 October 1905) was an English campaigner for women's rights. Life She was born in November 1825 at North Willingham, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. She was the grandchild of Lt. Colonel Ayscoghe B ...

and

Adelaide Anne Procter Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 – 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist. Her literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems appearing in Charles Dickens's periodicals ''Household Words'' and '' All the ...

through S.P.E.W. offered classes in arithmetic and set up the first commercial school to train women as book-keepers and the first shorthand classes for women.

Emily Faithfull Emily Faithfull (27 May 1835 – 31 May 1895) was an English women's rights activist who set up the Victoria Press to publish the ''English Woman's Journal''. Biography Emily Faithfull was born on 27 May 1835 at Headley Rectory, Surrey. She wa ...

trained women as compositors at the Victoria Press on Great Coram Street.

Maria Rye Maria Susan Rye, (31 March 1829 – 12 November 1903), was a social reformer and a promoter of emigration from England, especially of young women living in Liverpool workhouses, to the colonies of the British Empire, especially Canada. Early life ...

set up an office copying legal documents in Lincolns Inn Fields and in 1862, with

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (born Barbara Leigh Smith; 8 April 1827 – 11 June 1891) was an English educationalist and artist, and a leading mid-19th-century feminist and women's rights activist. She published her influential ''Brief Summar ...

, founded the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society. The space served as a sort of counterpart to the gentlemen's clubs then so important in London. The magazine was largely funded by

Helena, comtesse de Noailles Anna Maria Helena ("Coesvelt" or Coswell), comtesse de Noailles (c. 1826 – 1908) was an English noblewoman who used her wealth and influence to support History of women in the United Kingdom#Feminism and Reform, the reform of women's rights. Fam ...

, and the hire of the building by Theodosia Blacker, Baroness Monson.

References

{{coord, 51.5179, -0.1434, type:edu_region:GB-WSM, display=title Streets in the City of Westminster