59 Greek Street: Home of the Theatre Girl's Club, Soho, London

Product Information

The person behind the demolition of Bradshaw’s building at 59 Greek Street and erection of its replacement in the early 1880s was Maude Alethea Stanley, fourth child, third daughter of Edward and Henrietta Stanley, Baron and Baroness Stanley of Alderley. In the Music Room was a moveable platform 16’x 8’, which on the day of the Superintendent Architect’s visit was pushed to the east side. Soho has always been quite a dynamic, un-deodorised kind of place that welcomes creative oddities, but not bores,” says Choat.

While attending their auditions and rehearsals for dance routines, they found out about No 59 on the show-biz grapevine, thus enabling them to sleep in proper beds and much more securely than in London’s parks. There were no windows and the walls were covered in photos of Sinatra, Bogart, boxers, footballers and regulars, with an out-of-place disco ball providing some questionable sparkle. It is a fine book that remembers an aspect of women's history that would have been forgotten if it had not been written. We just want to be a friendly record company," Elton told Danny Holloway in New Musical Express (17 February 1973). While she says the location isn’t great from a retail perspective, the bottom end of Greek Street feels safe and cosy: “I never thought having a business right in the centre of London would feel so village-y.Legendary folk music venue Les Cousins used to be downstairs at what’s now Club 49: “Bob Dylan and Paul Simon played there – Les Cousins had a significant hand in the resurgence of folk in the 60s,” says Shrimplin. We'd like to use additional cookies to remember your settings and understand how you use our services. The second staircase in the south-west angle of the building, accessible from the Music Room, descended by stone spandrel steps to a street door, but rose by steps of wood from the first floor up to the fourth.

Greek Street is not a long road – three, four minutes’ walk from 1862 homeless charity House of St Barnabas at the top (where Dickens supposedly wrote A Tale of Two Cities ) to the Palace Theatre at the end. While some of these sites are no longer exactly the same as they were in the late 1960s and early 70s, we welcome you to take a walking tour through the start of Elton’s career using the map and legend below. On the ground floor were two very large rooms: the Gymnasium 32’6 x 17’0 towards the building’s north end, and the Supper Room, 32’6 x 13’6 to the south.The world of song and dance extended out from 59 Greek Street to provincial theatres and even to the ships that cruised the oceans. Elton would occasionally help out working behind the counter…even after he had released some of his own LPs!