Whitechapel High Street
"Whitechapel High Street provides a transition between the commercial development pressures from the City and the historic east end communities.
[3] In 2015 it was named by the Royal Society for Public Health as London's most unhealthy high street, having the highest concentration of fast-food outlets, payday lenders, bookmakers and tanning salons.
[5] John Stow's Survey of London in 1603 complained that the street was "pestered" with cottages and alleys, concluding that the "unsavoury" passage to Aldgate was "no small blemish to so famous a city".
[13] "Whitechapel High Street was lined with coaching inns; the road was full of traffic, carts with garden produce, market women with baskets of fruit, flocks of sheet, herds of cattle, brewers' drays and hay wains for the hay market.
"[14] From at least 1665 until 1928, in the Whitechapel hay market, farmers sold animal fodder from large carts in the street.
As London's population increased during the 19th century,and Whitechapel as a whole suffered poverty and overcrowding, the high street remained relatively prosperous.
It shows as a narrow strip of "middle class – well-to-do" housing on Booth's poverty map of 1889.
Victorian era philanthropic improvements included the ornate Passmore Edwards Library and the Whitechapel Gallery.
Many Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe to Whitechapel during 1880–1914 found work in the clothing industry, and the high street became their shop window.
Like much of the East End, Whitechapel High Street was extensively damaged by the blitz during World War II.
Large concrete and glass office buildings occupied this area, creating a "sense of desolation and insecurity for pedestrians".
[21] Side street: Commercial Road Central House – a 6-storey flatted factory, designed by Lush & Lester, built in 1964–65.
It is built in a modernist style with visible reinforced concrete frame and glass bands, and known as the "Aldgate Bauhaus".
Designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and inspired by Rachel Whiteread's Fourth Plinth, the extension adds an equal volume that mimics the horizontal banding of the original.
[23] 65a Whitechapel High Street – a 4-storey commercial building, built c1897 in Victorian style in red brick with Portland stone dressings.
[24] 65–68 Whitechapel High Street – a terrace of four 4-storey 2-bay shop-houses, built in 1853 in Georgian style in stock brick with Portland stone dressings and a gambrel roof concealed by a parapet.
[29] 76 Whitechapel High Street – a 4-storey 2-bay shop-house, built in 1845 in stock brick with stucco window frames, lintels and cornice.
One of the earliest public libraries in London, it was funded by philanthropist John Passmore Edwards and opened in 1892.
Whitechapel Gallery – designed by Charles Harrison Townsend in an Art Nouveau style, built in 1898–99 in buff terracotta.
84b Whitechapel High Street - a 4-storey commercial and office building (in Angel Alley) built in yellow brick.
Originally a tenement building, it hosted a printworks, most notably for Freedom Press, the oldest anarchist publisher in the English language, before being bought by the group in 1968 and renovated.
[35] 85 Whitechapel High Street – a narrow 4-storey shop-house, designed as a public house by Bird & Walters, built in 1900 in red brick with stone dressings (now painted white).
86 Whitechapel High Street – a 4-storey 2-bay shop-house, probably mid-19th century, but refronted in 1991 in brown bricks with metal windows and a projecting tiled mansard attic.
87 Whitechapel High Street – a 3-storey 3-bay shop-house, built c1955 with red brick facing and triplet metal windows with thin concrete frames.
[39] The Grade II listed metal relief above the door by Arthur Szyk depicts a Star of David supported by two Lions of Judah wielding sabres, and was commissioned by the Jewish Daily Post, which occupied the building in 1934–35.
[44] 94 Whitechapel High Street – a 5-storey shop and office building, designed by Fitzroy Robinson and Hubert H. Bull, built in 1960.
Burden, built in 1961 in a modernist style, with reinforced-concrete side beams and floor plates set forward of shallow bow windows.
[52] 128 Whitechapel High Street – a 4-storey 2-bay shop-house built in the late 18th century in plain Georgian style with flat window heads.
Nevertheless, it "remains the only middling shop-house on Whitechapel High Street to retain a semblance of its late 18th century appearance".
[55] Oceanair House, 133–137 Whitechapel High Street – a 7-storey shop and office building, designed by Philip Nicolle and built in 1937–38 in a streamlined deco moderne style with metal framed windows wrapping around the corner.
