The Acre sits at the heart of Covent Garden, an area with some of London’s deepest cultural and creative associations.
Given its name by the fruit and vegetable market which served London from 1666 to 1975, the words Covent Garden have long been used as a synonym for British opera and Theatreland. No other urban quarter in the world is home to two artistic companies as globally-renowned as The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet, in addition to more than twenty thriving theatres in the vicinity staging productions from the traditional to contemporary theatre – weaving the best of the performing arts into the neighbourhood’s tapestry of creativity. Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Helen Mirren and Anthony Hopkins are just a few of Britain’s finest actors to tread the theatreland stages. It’s been a pull for American performers too, with Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Junior seeking a place on the stage, and more recently, Hollywood actors like Christian Slater, Nicole Kidman and Orlando Bloom have gravitated to its famous boards. You can find light hearted musicals alongside dramas tackling the most pressing issues of the day.
Covent Garden is also the place where successive waves of London’s famous sub-cultures have gravitated, from the Mods of the early 60s dancing at The Lyceum in The Strand to the Sex Pistols playing their second-ever gig at the Central School of Art in Southampton Row and the punks who posed to Don Letts blasting out dub reggae at the new wave venue The Roxy in Neal Street in the 70s. It was in this period, when the market was shifted across the river to Nine Elms, that the former warehouses and offices began to be populated by fashion, design and music. David Bowie bought his suits at the boutique City Lights Studio in Shorts Gardens and met photographer artist Edward Bell at the Neal Street Gallery.
Zeev Aram’s store in Drury Lane brought the best of European furniture design and homewares to the heart of the West End. The presence in Long Acre of the New Musical Express – then one of the country’s most popular publications with sales in excess of 150,000 – encouraged others in the music industry to investigate the area.
Close by was The Blitz nightclub in Great Queen Street where the New Romantic movement was incubated. Attending nights held here were legions of future pop stars including Boy George – who worked for a spell as Blitz’s ‘hat-check girl’ – Bananarama, Sade, her boyfriend the broadcaster Robert Elms, Spandau Ballet and fashion designer John Galliano.
Just ahead of them came the more sober-suited Sir Paul Smith, who founded his international fashion brand with his first London outlet in Floral Street. The cumulative effect of the presence of these creatives was to prompt the influx of companies that made Covent Garden the beating heart of the global advertising and media industries in the 80s, 90s and 00s as The Piazza developed into the world-renowned open-air theatre for music, comedy and entertainment it is today.