Broadwick Street (formerly Broad Street) is a street in

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

City of Westminster The City of Westminster is a London borough with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in Greater London, England. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It contains a large par ...

, London. It runs for 0.18 miles (0.29 km) approximately west–east between Marshall Street and Wardour Street, crossing

Berwick Street Berwick Street is a street in the Soho, London, England, Soho district of the City of Westminster, running between Oxford Street to the north and Peter Street at the south. It was built towards the end of the 17th century; several early 18th ce ...

. The street extends across four separate estates, Colman Hedge Close, Little Gelding's, Pawlett's Garden and Pesthouse. Broad Street was notorious as the centre of an 1854 outbreak of

cholera Cholera () is an infection of the small intestine by some Strain (biology), strains of the Bacteria, bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea last ...

. This outbreak killed a total of 700 people and only twelve escaped. Physician John Snow traced the outbreak to a public water pump on the street, and disabled the pump. Before this time, the disease was widely thought to be caused by air-borne ' miasma'; Snow's findings showed it to be water-borne. A replica pump, together with an explanatory plaque, was erected close to the original location in 1992. The original pump was at the junction of Broad Street and Cambridge Street (today Lexington Street), close to the back wall of what today is the ' John Snow' pub. The site is subtly marked with a pink

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

kerbstone in front of the small wall plaque. A house on the corner of Broadwick and Marshall streets was the birthplace and childhood home of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

.Ackroyd, P. (1999) ''Blake'' London:Vintage The street crosses, or meets, Wardour Street, Duck Lane, Berwick Street, Hopkins Street, Ingestre Place, Poland Street, Lexington Street, Dufours Place, Marshall Street and Carnaby Street.

Current occupants

* No. 6:

Agent Provocateur An is a person who actively entices another person to commit a crime that would not otherwise have been committed and then reports the person to the authorities. They may target individuals or groups. In jurisdictions in which conspiracy is a ...

* Nos. 15–17: Yauatcha * No. 25: temper soho * No. 31: itsu * No. 33: Hearst Corporation * No. 35: Pret a Manger * No. 39: John Snow pub * No. 71: Ooyala

Former occupants

Nos. 48 & 50, Padgett & Braham Ltd. and Wakely & Wheeler Ltd, goldsmiths & silversmiths. Also at the same premises were T & A Wise Ltd. engravers, and The Flutemakers Guild, makers of flutes in precious metals.

References

{{Coord, 51, 30, 49, N, 00, 08, 09, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Streets in the City of Westminster Streets in Soho