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This July, Cork Street in London’s Mayfair turns 100. A short and modest stretch of pavement just west of Savile Row and north of Piccadilly Circus, it has long been a core part of the British commercial gallery world. Behind its façades, radical art has been shown, movements introduced, reputations made and lost, fortunes gained and squandered.

From Peggy Guggenheim’s short-lived but seismic Guggenheim Jeune gallery in the late 1930s to the post-war influence of Waddington Galleries (now Waddington Custot), the psychedelic provocations of dealer Groovy Bob Fraser in the ’60s, and a wave of contemporary galleries reinvigorating the street today—Cork Street endures as both a mirror and a maker of the British art world. To mark the centenary, gallerists who call the street home today reflect on its eccentric past, its changing fortunes, and what the future might hold.

Alison Jacques has walked the pavements of Cork Street for three decades—from receptionist at Waddington Galleries to gallery owner at number 22. Joining her in reflection is Jacob Twyford, senior director at Waddington Custot, who first came to Cork Street in 1985 and has witnessed its evolution over four decades, Matthew Flowers of the eponymous Flowers Gallery, and Jo Stella-Sawicka, senior director at Goodman Gallery, whose space is among the newest additions to the street’s cultural fabric.

“In 1994, I took a job at Waddington Galleries in Cork Street,” Jacques recalled. “I had just come from working at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and while I was there, I interviewed Leslie Waddington for an article in [the magazine] Flash Art. He claimed he never read anything journalists wrote about him—but he must have read that one, and even liked it, because soon after it was published, he offered me a job.”

That offer set Jacques on a path that would eventually bring her back to the very street where her career began, now with her name above the door of the gallery space she opened in 2023. “Once ensconced behind the reception desk at Waddingtons, I used to look out onto the spaces opposite and imagine which one I could rent for my own gallery in years to come,” she said.

Cork Street’s status in the British cultural imagination loomed large, shaping Jacques’s early impressions of its legacy and potential. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was primarily known for its aristocratic connections. Named after Richard Boyle, the 1st Earl of Cork, the street was laid out around 1685 and initially lined with grand houses for the nobility and upper classes. The traders on the street were mostly tailors, working on the fringes of the better-known Savile Row.

For Jacob Twyford, the street’s renowned identity took hold after the Second World War: “Cork Street really established itself in the post-war period as a place of difference, an alternative to the more traditional galleries south of Piccadilly,” he said. “Sitting as it does directly between the two big auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, it became the place where younger and emerging artists could find a home.”

For Stella-Sawicka, the street’s strength lies in the dual identity it holds in the British art world: “Cork Street has long been a meeting point between tradition and innovation. It’s also a space where commercial success hasn’t always come at the cost of curatorial bravery, which is rare and significant.”

Matthew Flowers, Director of Flowers Gallery, which has been on the street since 2000, agrees: “Like so much else in the art world, it’s the provenance. It’s the street that saw the launches of the careers of major postwar artists at Waddington, Tooth, Mayor, Redfern, Piccadilly, and Peggy Guggenheim, and has continued to be a gateway for emerging talent,” he said, naming a clutch of galleries that are still based on the street or have at some point called it home.

Indeed, Guggenheim’s gallery—though short-lived in the late 1930s, brought to London some of the most resonant names in modernist art. For Jacques, it is “sacred territory”:

“It fascinated me that a space which opened just before the Second World War existed for only 18 months, and yet introduced London to giants like Cocteau, Kandinsky and Tanguy,” she said.

But alongside the resonant global names of modernist art, Cork Street was home to that other London specialty—characters and eccentrics. “At number 21, my next-door neighbor was Robert Fraser—Groovy Bob,” said Jacques of a dealer who epitomised a wild and freewheeling era in London’s gallery life. Fraser gained household status as the gallerist who mounted several notable shows of artists, including Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, and Bridget Riley, and commissioned Peter Blake and Jann Haworth’s artwork for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Also notable was Lillian Browse, widely known as the ‘Duchess of Cork Street,’ an art dealer who came to prominence for her determination, during the Second World War, to continue to curate exhibitions at London’s National Gallery. “If she and Peggy were here now, maybe we’d form the first female art dealers’ association on Cork Street,” Jacques noted.

Flowers remembers the vibrancy of the street’s heyday in the 1990s. “The energy of the huge characters who ran the galleries: Leslie Waddington, Godfrey Pilkington, Bernard Jacobson, Robert Fraser. And Mulligan’s Pub with its legendary St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.”

In 2022, Jacques opened her new gallery at 22 Cork Street—just across from where she once worked. “Opening our new space was an incredible moment,” she said. “As we were installing our opening show of Sheila Hicks, the artist Ian Davenport—who I worked with in the early ’90s—was installing his own show at Waddingtons. It felt like closing a long chapter and beginning a new one.”

Twyford remembers his own entry into Cork Street in the mid-1980s: “As a 21-year-old recently graduated music student from Leeds, earning a living on building sites in South London, I honestly took the job to get out of the biting March winds,” he recalled. “I had little idea that 40 years later I would be running the gallery for Stephane Custot!”

Twyford joined the art world at the height of the political febrility that defined much of the 1980s. On 21st May 1985, for example, the windows of numerous art dealers on Cork Street were covered with buckets of grey paint during a night-time attack by a group called Grey Organisation, who claimed they were engaging in anti-establishment protest. In 2022, almost 37 years later, this Cork Street Attack was recreated in an exhibition at The Mayor Gallery.

For Stella-Sawicka, Cork Street had always held a pull. The director began her early gallery years at Stephen Friedman Gallery, then on the adjacent Old Burlington Street. “I knew well the magical properties of this location—a well-trodden route from Sotheby’s through the Royal Academy to Christie’s,” she said.

Flowers adds that he, too, had his eye on the street for a while before setting up. “We were looking to complement our two warehouse-style spaces in Hackney. Our gallery was formerly Robert Fraser’s, and then Victoria Miro’s, so we knew it had a wonderful history, with a brightness of its own to match.”

Jacques’s space is part of the larger regeneration of Cork Street, spearheaded by The Pollen Estate. “The opportunity to build a space exactly as we wanted it, from a concrete shell, was wonderful and scary all at once,” she said. “But now we’re open, our artists love the space, and we’ve welcomed thousands of visitors.”

Goodman Gallery joined this broader revival in 2019. “They were—at the time—the only purpose-built galleries in London with the volume of space to present our programme with ambition,” Stella-Sawicka explained. “The regeneration brings a fresh chapter, one that allows for more diverse and international voices, which is essential to keeping the street and London relevant.”

Today, as the redevelopment nears completion, Cork Street is lined with world-famous contemporary art galleries housed in purpose-built, high-ceilinged spaces that occupy more than 43,000 square feet of revamped streetscape. Some 15 of these galleries are joining forces for a group exhibition, “Fear Gives Wings To Courage,” to mark the occasion of the centenary.

Flowers notes: “The redevelopment was challenging to work through, but very much worth it with expansive public spaces and increased gallery capacity. Cork Street’s west end location is within a prime cultural gravity centre, which became absolutely essential as we came out of the pandemic, when visitors could explore multiple shows in one stroll without public transport or long travel.”

Despite its reputation for high-end art, Cork Street has always had a populist undercurrent—a mix of street-level charm and informal meeting spots. Jacques recalls both the prestige and the community spirit that defined her early days.

“Cork Street at dusk is a curious place to be—a place where art history has been made and a cast of colorful characters have lived and worked,” Jacques said. “If I had a time machine, I’d bring back Queen’s Snack Bar, which sat on the corner for decades. It was the place to go—a sort of democratic canteen where dealers, artists, critics, and art handlers rubbed shoulders.”

Twyford notes: “It is my greatest hope that the old galleries and the new galleries can come together to recreate some of the eccentricity, comradeship, and rivalry that made Cork Street such a vibrant destination in the 1970s and 80s.”

Today, Morris’s café—serving Cork Street for more than 35 years — still fulfils a comparable role. “We still have Morris’s,” Jacques said. “But Queen’s was something else. I miss that kind of casual, social energy. The art world needs more of it.”

“There’s a different kind of energy now,” added Stella-Sawicka. “It’s much more international. Goodman Gallery has always operated with the idea that the gallery itself can be that kind of gathering place.”

She noted the addition of Frieze No. 9 Cork Street—a space opened by the art fair conglomerate in 2021 where up to four galleries host temporary exhibitions year-round—brings a “different cadence of energy.”

Flowers points to the practical benefits of such a concentrated zone of activity: “The consolidation of top international galleries on the street makes it very efficient to get a snapshot of what’s going on in the art world.”

As Cork Street marks its centenary, its reputation as “the spiritual center of avant-garde art in London” still holds. “To have a gallery here is something I never take for granted,” Jacques said. “And to be part of its renaissance has been an honor. It’s amazing to look back and realize it really has come full circle. It’s not just about prestige. It’s about presence—being part of something bigger than yourself. Something with history, energy, and meaning.”