In its early years, Soho Square was one of the most fashionable places to live in London.
Soho Square is a public park within a square leased by the Soho Square Garden Committee to Westminster City council.
The original name was King Square (after Charles II) and a statue of the ’Merry Monarch’ has stood in the square since 1681.
The development lease to convert the surrounding fields, for 53 years and four months, was granted in 1677 to Richard Frith, elector of the Corporation of London and bricklayer.
In 1778, the naturalist Joseph Banks of 32 Soho Square was elected president of the Royal Society and his home hosted scientists visiting from around the world.
Between 1778 and 1801 the Square was home to the infamous White House brothel at the Manor House, 21 Soho Square.
A sequence of house rebuilding and renovation began in the 1730s, when many of the houses built in the 1670s and 1680s were becoming dilapidated and old-fashioned, continued for over a century. Between 1880 and 1914, 11 of the 38 old houses in the square were rebuilt or considerably altered.
In 1852 the Hospital for Women, begun nine years before, moved to 30 Soho Square from Red Lion Square to accommodate 20 more beds. It moved and merged in 1989 into the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Obstetric Hospital in the Euston Road.
A 200-person air raid shelter was built under the park during World War II.
Soho Square is home to several media organisations, including the British Board of Film Classification, 20th Century Fox, and Paul McCartney’s MPL Communications.
