Electric Avenue is a street in Brixton, London. Built in the 1888,^[1] it was the first market street to be lit by electric lights,^[2][3] later, an iron and glass canopy was installed.^[1] (On 3 February 1879, the first street to be lit by an incandescent lightbulb, invented by Joseph Swan, was Mosley Street, in Newcastle upon Tyne).^{[4] [5] [6] [7]} Today, Electric Avenue contains national retail chains (Boots, Greggs, Iceland), various local food and housewares retailers, and hosts a part of Brixton Market (comprising the street market down Electric Avenue, Pope’s Road and Brixton Station Road, and the arcades of Brixton Village, Market Row and Reliance Arcade^[8]), which specialises in selling African, Caribbean, South American and South Asian^[9] products. It is located just around the corner from Brixton Underground station (1972). The street originally had cast iron Victorian canopies^[10] over the pavements which were damaged in WWII, and removed in the 1980s.

History

The road is referenced in Eddy Grant's 1983 single "Electric Avenue", which reached #2 on both the UK and US singles charts.^[11] The song itself was inspired by the 1981 Brixton riot.

On 17 April 1999, the neo-Nazi bomber David Copeland planted a nail bomb outside a supermarket in Brixton Road with the intention of igniting a race war across Britain.^[12] A market trader became suspicious and moved the device to a less crowded area of Electric Avenue, where 39 people were injured in its explosion.

In 2016, Eddy Grant was invited to switch on a new illuminated street sign installed as part of a £1 million refurbishment.^[13] Afterwards, Grant was given one of the previous signs as a keepsake.^[14]