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Regent Street, London
Regent Street, London
As 99-year leases expire along this most famous of central London shopping streets, AHP continues to work with Donald Insall Associates to provide information about when and how individual buildings were constructed.
Regent Street was first laid out after the Napoleonic War. Designed by John Nash as part of an imposing avenue from the new Regent’s Park to Carlton House, home of the Prince Regent, the street was completed in 1825 and hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ of town planning by contemporary critics.
In 1848 the street’s distinctive colonnades were removed following complaints by shopkeepers about disreputable trades conducted in the shadow of the columns. In 1865 the Café Royal, at the southern end of Regent Street, was opened, becoming a popular meeting place for members of London’s creative social elite including Oscar Wilde and T.S. Elliot.
Nash’s terraces were demolished and rebuilt between 1914 and 1927. It is these buildings which are now the focus of interior redevelopment.