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Langham Place
Langham Place is a short but architecturally significant curve in central London, connecting the southern end of Portland Place to the top of Regent Street. Postcoded W1B and situated within the Marylebone ward of the City of Westminster, it forms one of the key pivots in John Nash's early nineteenth-century Regent Street scheme, which required a visual break to conceal the angle between Portland Place and the new processional route south.
The solution Nash employed was All Souls Church, completed in 1824, whose circular portico and needle spire stand at the bend and draw the eye away from the change in alignment. The church is Grade I listed and remains in use today. The curve also gave its name to the Langham Hotel, which opened in 1865 on Portland Place directly opposite and was for a time one of the largest hotels in Europe.
Broadcasting House, the BBC's headquarters, occupies the western side of Langham Place. Designed by George Val Myer and completed in 1932, it was the world's first purpose-built broadcast centre. Eric Gill's sculptures of Prospero and Ariel mark the entrance. A major extension completed in 2013 consolidated the BBC's London radio, television, and journalism operations under one roof. Langham Place is small in area but outsized in its architectural and institutional significance, linking the Georgian planning of Portland Place to the commercial scale of Regent Street.
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