Shop in Brewer Street, Soho, ca.1878

From: A.& J. Bool

RA Collection: Art

"The photograph shows an old-fashioned shop, date early eighteenth century, of a style very few examples of which are now left. Brewer Street was built about 1680, Soho being then, as it long remained, a fashionable part of the town."

The above description, by Alfred |Marks, was taken from the letterpress which accompanies the photographs. The house, in the photograph, at the east corner of Lower James Street was of three storeys with a shop front divided into three bays by Doric columns at street level. By 1878, when the photograph was issued, Soho had declined, becoming a densely populated maze of interconnecting passages and courts, an area considered to be 'a hot-bed of disease' and a 'nursery of crime'. After terrible outbreaks of cholera in the 1850's and 1860s, the expiry of leases allowed an attempt, in 1883, to clear the south side of Brewer Street and new dwellings (St James's Residences) were built by the Commissioner of Woods and Forests. In 2008 the shop no longer exists, the site is occupied by a modernist style building housing a coffee bar.