Part of the Riga Port City project, Zone E, is given the name of Soho Rīga, thus adding to the number of Sohos all over the world. It is also known that the name is deliberately imitated by Soho, Hong Kong, one of the main tourist areas on Hong Kong Island. An area in New York City is called SoHo because it lies in South of Houston Street in lower Manhattan, while Beijing Soho (JianWai SoHo) stands for Small Office (Home Office). But perhaps to most people, the name is likely to connote with its origins in London, the capital of the United Kingdom.

Soho is a multicultural area of approximately one square mile in the borough of the City of Westminster, central London’s West End. Chinatown and the area around Leicester Square can be considered as either just inside or just outside the southern edge of Soho, home to industry, commerce, culture and entertainment, as well as a residential area for both rich and poor. For centuries it has housed waves of immigrants: the French church in Soho Square is witness to its position as a centre for French Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Soho is famed for its many clubs, pubs, bars, and restaurants, as well as late night coffee shops that give the street an "open all night" feel at the weekends and not forgetting the array of sex shops dotted here and there. Indeed, most Soho weekends are now so busy as to warrant closing-off of some of the streets to vehicles. This measure was implemented for a brief period in the mid-1990s, but Westminster Council later removed most of the pedestrianisation, supposedly after complaints from some local businesses about loss of trade.

As recently as Valentine's Day 2006, a new campaign was launched to drive business back into the heart of Soho London. The campaign, called I Love Soho, features a community focused web-site. The campaign was launched in a blaze of publicity at the iconic former Raymond Revue Bar in Walkers Court, with such celebrities in attendance as Charlotte Church, Amy Winehouse and Paris Hilton. I Love Soho is backed by the Mayor of London Ken Livingston, the Soho Society, Westminster Council and Visit London.

There are many record shops in the area, specifically around Berwick Street, where shops such as Blackmarket Records and Vinyl Junkies dish out the "freshest grooves".

Theatre and film industry

Soho is near the heart of London's theatre area, and is a centre of the independent film and video industry as well as the television and film post-production industry. It is home to Soho Theatre, purpose built in 2000 to present new plays and stand-up comedy. The British Board of Film Classification, formerly known as the British Board of Film Censors, can be found in Soho Square.

Soho is criss-crossed by rooftop free-space communications laser beams, and below ground level with fiber optics, known as Sohonet, which connects the Soho media and post-production community to British film studio locations such as Pinewood Studios and Shepperton Studios, and to other major production centres such as Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Wellington, New Zealand.

History

The area which is now Soho was grazing farmland until 1536 when it was taken by Henry VIII as a royal park for the Palace of Whitehall. The name Soho first appears in the 17th century. Most authorities believe that the name derives from the old ‘soho!’ hunting call (Soho! There goes the fox!). Some have suggested a link with the Duke of Monmouth, who used ‘soho’ as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor, but the use of the name predates that battle by at least half a century. An alternative proposal is that the name is derived from a shortening of Somerset House, a grand palace to be found to the south of the strand, built in 1547.

In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans. He leased 19 of its 22 acres to Joseph Girle, who as soon as he had gained permission to build there, promptly passed his lease and licence to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677, who began its development. In 1698 William III granted the Crown freehold of most of this area to William, Earl of Portland. Meanwhile the southern part of what became the parish of St Anne Soho was sold by the Crown in parcels in the 16th and 17th century, with part going to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester.

Despite the best intentions of landowners such as the Earls of Leicester and Portland to develop the land on the grand scale of neighbouring Bloomsbury, Marylebone and Mayfair, immigrants, such as French Huguenots, settled in the area, and it never became a fashionable area for the rich. Indeed, it has been the making of Soho’s charm and character that it has been neglected and undeveloped and allowed to run a little wild and rough and cosmopolitan. By the mid 1700s all the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved out and the artists had started to move in.

By the mid 1800s all respectable families had moved away and prostitutes, music halls and small theatres had moved in. By the early part of the 1900s there was a healthy mix of foreign nationals opening cheap eating houses and it became a fashionable place to eat for intellectuals, writers and artists.

From the 1930s to the early 1960s, if Soho folklore is believed, the pubs of Soho were packed every night with drunken writers, poets and artists, many of whom never sobered up enough to become successful; and it was also during this period that the great Soho pub landlords established themselves.

Places of Interest