London’s Alleys: Smart’s Place, WC2
This is an alley of mixed appearance in Holborn that starts at one end with large modern offices, but at the other still retains a bit of its older Victorian heritage.
The alley is a lot older than that, though. It first shows up in the middle of the 1600s as Cole Yard and was slightly longer than it is today, extending a bit further south, where today a building blocks the passage. It’s possible, but unproven, that the name comes from the developer Bessitt Cole, who lived nearby.
It’s unclear when the name changed, but it was showing up as Smart’s Buildings by the 1800s (sometimes with and sometimes without the apostrophe). It may be a coincidence, but there’s a slight possibility that it was renamed after William or George Smart, picture dealers who were trading in Cole Yard some years before the renaming.
It gained its current name, Smart’s Place in the 1940s.
Originally lined with rows of terraced housing, most of the passageway now has two substantial office blocks, both recently refurbished. The most recently refurbished building, now called One Smarts Place, but actually on High Holborn, is the former 1980s brown-glazed office block, Arab Press House, which was redeveloped in 2017 into the current modern offices.
The passage crosses a road and continues a little bit further south. The most notable building here is on the western side, formerly occupied by the former City Literary Institute.
The City Literary Institute was founded in 1919 on the site of a former Board School for children. That Victorian building was demolished and replaced with the current block in 1938. The new building, which contained a theatre, concert hall, and gym, was officially opened by the then Poet Laureate, John Masefield.
The City Lit moved to a new site in 2005, and the building is now offices and a teacher training school.
The other side of the alley is lined with the former book seller’s warehouse building.
By chance, the day I turned up to have a look was when walking between two Open House venues, and one of the doors was open with the green Open House sign outside – but for prebooked guided tours only. That was Number 8, where a rooftop family home was added on top of the existing building a few years ago.
Maybe come back next year to have a look inside.
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