Piccadilly Circus compiled by: Leslie Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space of London's West End in the City of Westminster, built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with the a lot of shopping street of Piccadilly.
Piccadilly Circus connects to Piccadilly, a thoroughfare whose name first appeared in 1626 as Piccadilly Hall, named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, or piccadillies, a term used for various kinds of collars. Piccadilly Circus used to be surrounded by illuminated advertising hoardings on buildings, starting in the early 1900s, but only one building now carries them, the one in the northwestern corner between Shaftesbury Avenue and Glasshouse Street. The earliest signs used incandescent light bulbs; these were replaced with neon lights, as well as moving sign. The former Swan & Edgar department store on the west side of the circus between Piccadilly and Regent Street was built in 1920–23 to a design by Reginald. Since the closure of the department store in the early 1980s, the building has been successively the flagship London store of music chains Tower Records, Virgin Megastore and Zavvi. The current occupier is clothing brand The Sting. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piccadilly_Circus |