Soho Square was built in the late 1670s and was initially one of the most fashionable addresses for Town dwellers. Originally called King’ Square in honor of King Charles II, its center housed a statute of the king finished and mounted in 1681 by Danish sculptor Caius Gabriel Cibber. By the early 1800s, the statue was describe as being “in a most wretched mutilated state; and the inscriptions on the base of the pedestal quite illegible” (http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols33-4/pp51-53). The statue was removed in 1875 while new railings and flower beds were helping to revive the square. The statue bopped around in private collections until it was restored to the square (but not to its former central position) in 1938.
The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions November 1812.
