Georgian stucco terraces and red brick corners sit within a few streets of the BT Tower's concrete shaft.
What Fitzrovia looks like
holds the area's grandest terrace, four storey stucco fronted houses from the 1790s behind iron railings around a central garden. runs a few streets south, with shopfronts and restaurant frontages at ground level and plain brick upper floors above.
East of the grid angles away from the square pattern rather than running square. The corner buildings along and are three and four storey red brick with white stone banding and shopfronts at street level.
Narrow lanes run through the blocks behind the main streets. is cobbled, its brick fronts patched with garage doors and roller shutters behind a pub on the corner. , off Newman Street, is barely wide enough for two people to pass.
The BT Tower rises directly out of this low grid on Cleveland Street, a round concrete shaft clad in glass and taller than anything else for streets in every direction. On , university buildings in raw concrete and dark glass sit at its base, put up decades after the terraces a block away.
Shot in Fitzrovia
Phantom Thread used 4 Fitzroy Square as the exterior of the House of Woodcock in 2017. The building is Grade I listed and sits on the square's own Georgian terrace. Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla used a Georgian building on Tottenham Street, a few streets south, as its lawyers' office in 2008. Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho dressed Goodge Place, Maple Street and the southern end of Charlotte Street as a 1960s Soho street in 2019.
Phantom Thread, 2017
Fitzroy Square
The exterior of the House of Woodcock, Reynolds Woodcock's dressmaking house in the film, was filmed at 4 Fitzroy Square. The building is a Grade I listed Georgian townhouse on the square's own terrace.
What Fitzrovia can double for
New Town in Edinburgh, Scotland
Edinburgh's New Town keeps the same Georgian scale as Fitzroy Square. Robert Adam designed terraces in both places, and the ITV series Belgravia used the New Town's own stone garden squares as a London garden square in 2020. Stucco and porticoes were added afterward in the edit. Edinburgh's terraces are built in sandstone rather than brick or stucco, so a tight shot on the stonework gives it away. The garden squares and iron railings hold up better in wider frames. Try searching Georgian stone garden squares now.
Merrion Square in Dublin, Ireland
Merrion Square went up in the same decades as Fitzroy Square, and its red brick terraces carry the same fanlights over the doors and iron railings around a central garden. The scale is close enough that a street level shot could pass for either city without a wide establishing frame. Dublin's front doors are more often brightly painted and its brick runs redder than Fitzrovia's pale stucco, so a frame that takes in several doors together looks like Dublin rather than London. Try searching red brick terraces with fanlights now.
