Thanks to an article in this weekend’s Los Angeles Times, I just learned that the U.S. Embassy is leaving its digs in London’s posh Grosvenor Square (one of my favorite Grateful Dead lines: “As I was walking around Grosvenor Square/not a chill to the winter but a nip to the air”) for a more secure compound to be built on the other side of the Thames.
The wrong side, according to some.
The article provides an interesting look at the rivalry between the tony north and the down-and-out south, a rivalry I was only slightly aware of. Due to my bizarre interest in epidemiology as a kid, I knew the southern side of the river was where plague victims were carted off to be buried, but I didn’t know that a cultural and social divide exists today. It sort of reminds me of that friendly rivalry between residents of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and now Brooklyn, like south London, is this hipster cool place to live.
As the article points out, the view from the new American embassy will be hard to beat — but leaving all those years of history at Grosvenor Square is sad.
Related posts:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
It’s been a long time in the works, really. I hope the new embassy is much more user-friendly than the old one!
The author has seriously over-simplified things. Most Londoners don’t think of the north as ‘tony’ and the south as ‘down and out.” (Unless you’re speaking with someone who lives in Belgravia!) There are plenty of great neighbourhoods in South London; and some pretty lousy ones in the North.
It’s more simply that you are either north of the Thames or South of the Thames; it’s more a geographical divide – Londoners aren’t known for being spontaneous so if you live on opposite sides of the river, you aren’t likely to get people over for your dinner party!