This street is mentioned by its present name in 1679, and by the same name in the parish ratebooks in the following year. There seems no reason to doubt that it took its name from the Greek Church (later St. Mary's, Crown Street) which was built in 1677 in Hog Lane. Since the name existed when the building-up of the street had hardly begun it was presumably bestowed intentionally by Richard Frith and his associates, and perhaps reflects, like Compton Street, their wish to gratify the Bishop of London, who had countenanced the establishment of the church and brought Frith into the negotiations for its site. The church did not abut on Greek Street but its main entrance was towards that street and it may well have been both accessible and conspicuously visible thence for a period of four or five years before the street was lined with houses.
The ratebooks suggest that three or four houses stood in the street in 1679, and eight in the next year. By 1683 the street was more than half built, with thirty-five ratepayers: the east side was by then built upon, with gaps, throughout its length as far north (probably) as No. 4, and the west side more continuously but only as far north as Bateman Street. In 1685 the west side had been extended northward by five houses. The ratebooks for 1686–90 are missing. By 1691 the street had fifty-four houses and was virtually complete except for the west side north of No. 58 which formed part of the curtilage of No. 27 Soho Square.
Little is known of the circumstances of the first building of the street. Mention has already been made of the arrangement concluded in June 1679 between Frith and a scrivener in his employment, George Taylor, by which Frith was to build Taylor a house in Greek Street in remuneration for a year's professional work. The house, which was left unfinished, was probably on the site of No. 58, and was to have been like those which Frith's associate Cadogan Thomas was building in the same street. Thomas's eight house-plots, which Frith and Pym had leased to him for building in the previous month, May 1679, were opposite, at the northern end of the east side.
Only four building tradesmen, other than Frith and Thomas, can be associated by name with the street in its early years. Richard Tyler, the brickmaker who was an extensive builder in St. James's in the 1680's and 1690's, had at an unknown period a lease or leases from Frith and Pym of sites including Nos. 54 and 57 on the west side of Greek Street. John Chaplin, a joiner, probably held sites on the same side c. 1683–5 and may have had a yard and workshop in the street. Another site on the same side was held c. 1679– 85 by Martin Heatley, a bricklayer. On the east side the glazier Augustine Beare was evidently the first occupant of No. 17, by 1691; his widow later owned No. 12–13 on the same side of the street, which may point to his having been the building lessee hereabouts. Both the houses associated with him have survived in some degree.
From its early years until the last decade or two of the eighteenth century the street always had one or more people of title residing in it. Its occupants in 1691 included four knights or baronets, and in 1714 two earls, a lady and a baronet. Among the ratepaying householders there were from the beginning at least three or four with French-sounding names. In the period c. 1710–40 the proportion was nearly a quarter of the whole, but by the 1820's only one or two of the ratepayers' names seem foreign.
Three sites in the street occupied in the early eighteenth century by taverns or coffee houses are worthy of mention. One site, at the north-western corner with Old Compton Street, was occupied from 1697 to 1714 by Edmund Andlaby (who had previously occupied the site of No. 25). An ironmonger of these names worked for the parish c. 1706–8, but the premises in Greek Street were known in 1711 as Andlaby's Coffee House, at the sign of the Turk's Head. It was subsequently well known under the latter name, and was particularly resorted to for masonic meetings. In 1759 the proprietor removed the establishment to No. 9 Gerrard Street.
The Pillars of Hercules public house at No. 7 Greek Street is a modern building but succeeds earlier taverns of that name (or the Hercules Pillars) which had occupied the same site since at least 1733. Probably the date can be carried back further, as the 'Hercules Pillars' which was on or near this site in 1714 was presumably a tavern, and the ratepayer at that time had been in occupation of the site since 1709.
At Nos. 29 Greek Street and 33 Romilly Street there has been a public house called the Coach and Horses since at least the 1720's.
In 1720 Strype called the street 'well built and inhabited'. The rebuilding about the time of the realization of the Portland freehold in 1734 was only partial and, even whenhandsomely executed (as at Nos. 48 and 50 on the west side) seems sometimes to have been initiated by the lessee without the direct control of a Portland building lease. Probably four of the original late seventeenth-century houses still survive in more or less altered state, No. 12–13 and Nos. 14 and 17 on the east side and No. 47 on the west.
The Portland estate plans of c. 1792–3 show more shop fronts than in Frith Street. They appear at most of the sites which are shown on the east side. On the west side, they appear at most of the sites shown in the southern half of the street, below No. 47, but in the northern half they are only recognizable at the corners of Bateman Street.
By 1850 the Post Office directory indicates that very few of the houses were in wholly private occupation. Many ordinary retail shops appear and also a considerable number of workers in wood, metal and leather, and various other small manufactories. In 1900 the types of occupation were similar, seemingly with many workshops: five restaurants are also listed.
The street now has fewer restaurants than Frith Street, and its rather drab appearance is accentuated by the return wall of the Casino Theatre, which occupies a large part of its west side. Although it has some fifteen buildings dating from the first half of the eighteenth century or earlier, most have been refronted and the street is predominantly nineteenth-century in appearance. At one site, that of No. 6, a fairly well-preserved early eighteenth-century house survives behind an elaborate front of the late nineteenth century. Externally the most interesting feature of the street is its nineteenth-century shop fronts. The best of them, at No. 17, is now protected by a Building Preservation Order, but there is another interesting one, of a slightly later date, three doors away at No. 20. No. 3 has a good example and so, until its recent rebuilding, had No. 4. These two shop fronts were closely similar in style, as can be seen from a photograph of No. 4 in the National Monuments Record. At No. 52 is an unusual shop front of the later nineteenth century, built on a corner site with five windows divided by slender columns, these windows being set tangentially beneath a curved, deeply-coved cornice of wood.
The rateable value of the houses in the street totalled about £1,725 in the 1740's, with an average assessment of about £30 for each house. In 1792 the total was about £2,420 and the average about £39. In 1844 the total was about £3,600 and the average about £56, and in 1896 the total about £6,480 and the average about £117. Very little amalgamation of sites had taken place.
Residents and lodgers in houses in Greek Street which are not described elsewhere have included:
Some artists whose addresses are given as being in Greek Street in exhibition catalogues, but whose names do not appear in the ratebooks, are listed below, with the years in which they exhibited:
Text extracted from British History Online, a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800.
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