London (Fodor's 2012) - Fodor's [52]
If you’re planning to explore the East End art scene, pick up a free art map at the Whitechapel Art Gallery to help you navigate around the many small galleries and art spaces.
As far as nightlife, there’s no time limit here. Start after shopping—Hoxton’s bars are your best bet—and finish as far into the following morning as your stamina will allow.
GETTING THERE
The best Tube stops to start from are Whitechapel or Aldgate East on the District–Hammersmith & City lines, and Aldgate on the Metropolitan and Circle lines.
FEELING PECKISH?
Inside Spitalfields Market is Canteen (0845/686–1122), an open-floor-plan eatery with long communal tables that serves British dishes made with additive-free ingredients.
For some of the finest coffee in London (by way of New Zealand), go to Nude Espresso (26 Hanbury St. | E1 6QR | 0780/422–3590). The best beans, machines, and baristas are complemented by delicious sandwiches and cakes.
A GOOD WALK
There are some thrilling walks that illustrate the progress of Jack and other murderers around the East End: recommended is the Blood and Tears Walk: London’s Horrible Past (020/7625–5155), led by researcher and actor Declan McHugh, which departs daily from Barbican Tube station.
SAFETY
Around the central hubs of Hoxton, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, and Brick Lane, you’re unlikely to experience any trouble during daylight hours; even after dark it’s relatively safe. However, if you’re venturing into Whitechapel or out toward Bethnal Green and Mile End, be on your guard at all times.
EAST END STREET SMARTS
Brick Lane and the narrow streets running off it offer a paradigm of the East End’s development. Its population has moved in waves: communities seeking refuge, others moving out in an upwardly mobile direction.
Brick Lane has seen the manufacture of bricks (during the 16th century), beer, and bagels, but nowadays it’s becoming the hub of artistic bohemia, especially at the Old Truman Brewery with its calendar of diverse cultural activities. It’s also the heart of Banglatown—Bangladeshis make up one-third of the population in this London borough, and you’ll see that the surrounding streets have their names written in Bengali—where you find many kebab and curry houses along with shops selling videos, colorful saris, and stacks of sticky sweets. On Sunday morning the entire street becomes pedestrianized. Shops and cafés are open, and several stalls are set up making it a companion market to the nearby Petticoat Lane.
Flower and Dean streets, past the ugly 1970s housing project on Thrawl Street (and once the most disreputable street in London) was where Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters, was born in 1902.
Fournier Street contains fine examples of the neighborhood’s characteristic Georgian terraced houses, many of them built by the richest of the early-18th-century Huguenot silk weavers (note the enlarged windows on the upper floors). Most of those along the north side of Fournier Street have been restored by conservationists; others still contain textile sweatshops—only now the workers are Bengali.
Wilkes Street, with more 1720s Huguenot houses, is north of the Christ Church, Spitalfields, and neighboring Princelet Street was once important to the East End’s Jewish community. Where No. 6 stands now, the first of several thriving Yiddish theaters opened in 1886, playing to packed houses until the following year, when a false fire alarm, rung during a January performance, ended with 17 people being crushed to death and so demoralized the theater’s actor-founder, Jacob Adler, that he moved his troupe to New York. Adler played a major role in founding that city’s great Yiddish theater tradition—which, in turn, had a significant effect on Hollywood.
Elder Street, just off Folgate, is another gem of original 18th-century houses. On the south and east side of Spitalfields Market are yet more time-warp streets that are worth a wander, such as Gun Street, where artist Mark Gertler (1891–1939) lived at No. 32.
EAST END ART SCENE
It was only inevitable that the