George Street

“ I anger myself. I cry, "Coacher, I have said you George Street." "Olraïtt, maounsiah," say he, "this is George Street." "Not here," I respond. "Is there two George Streets?" Then he swear, he laugh; he ask that he may be blown; he say more, that I comprehend not. ”

“ There is landing and scuffling and pushing; the quivering old barges, moored in the mud, are swaying and groaning beneath trampling feet. Then, for an instant, Thames Street, Upper and Lower, is invaded by an ant-hill swarm of spruce clerks, who mingle strangely with the fish-women and the dock-porters. But the insatiable counting-houses soon swallow them up: as though London’s commercial maw were an hungered too, for breakfast, at nine o’clock in the morning. ”

“ King Street received its title because it was the direct road between the Court and the Abbey. Princes Street, a modern thoroughfare, occupying the site of Old Westminster Mews, was so called on account of its proximity to King Street. Parker Street perpetuates the memory of Archbishop Parker, one of the principal benefactors of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. This street was formerly known as Bennet Street, the old name of the College. Great George Street covers the ground originally occupied by the stable-yard of “The George and the Dragon,” a well-known coaching house in bygone days. ”

“ Thus, when one passes through London, from old Victorian street to inner suburb, then to outer suburb, until one comes to the spreading country of Tooting Bec Common, when one has seen the homes of the rich, their marble solemnity, when one has seen those of the poor in the grimy suburbs that cluster, and emerges at last into those clean suburban streets, where in almost every window an aspidistra wilts in its pot, one may grow a little doubtful of the social revolution. We educate the poor, and sometimes we give them their chance: the next step is the aspidistra. ”

“ George’s, without seeing a single fight, without being hustled or assaulted, without coming across a man too drunk to lift himself from the kerb. It is a lively, cheerful street, with points which an artist might find picturesque; it is growing in respectability, but it is not yet by any means so clean as it might be, and there are fragrances and perfumes lingering about its open doors and courts which other parts of London will not admit within their boundaries. ”

“ Many of these streets, such as Old Kent Road, such as Tooley Street, have become wholly commercial, have turned into long lines of gray warehouses and decaying side streets, haunted by many children; some, like Jamaica Road, and most of Bermondsey, have entirely fallen into the hands of the grayest commerce, but here and there you are bound to find a still splendid Georgian house, looking rather like a distressed Irish lady, who does her best to keep her transformation combed, and to maintain the traditions of the Ballymullins of County Mayo. ”

“ You have but to be invited to dinner in Gower Street, or to have a morning call to make in Bedford Square. Take a walk from young Mr. Barry’s bran-new opera-house in Bow Street, and walk straight a-head—nearly a measured mile to the Square of Bedford. You pass the gigantic carriage factory, which I will call by its ancestral name of Houlditch’s—for it always seems to be changing proprietors—at the corner of Long Acre. You ascend Endell Street, and greet with satisfaction such signs of advancing civilisation as baths and wash-houses, and a bran-new dispensary. ”

“ In Regent Street, every other vehicle bears the stamp of wealth, with its spotless coachmen, and horses better groomed than half the men in the City. Languid young lords stroll by arm in arm, displaying a dazzling amount of shirt-front; elaborately coiffured ladies, fresh from some Park Lane boudoir, trip across the pavement, and dive into gorgeous restaurants. Now and again a son of toil passes, but his poverty is swamped by the surrounding glitter.
George looked on at this everyday scene with a comfortable feeling that for the time being he was one of the élite. ”

“ The true suburbs lie farther out. You have to go well beyond the Brixton Bon Marché before you can find such a place as Streatham, with its endless, well-kept, villa streets of red brick houses, nearly all alike, creeper and grass plot complete. Those suburbs outline a new social order; with a little experience you can easily tell the thirty-five-pounds-a-year street from the fifty-two-pounds-a-year street; you come with a feeling of familiarity upon the corner house, where lives the doctor or the surgeon. ”

“ Mill Street affords us an additional memory of the rurality of London in bygone times. George Street (also St. George’s Church) , Hanover Street, and Hanover Square were designations in honour of the Hanoverian succession in the person of George I. Davies Street, connecting Berkeley Square with Oxford Street, received its name in compliment [282] to Miss Mary Davies, the heiress of Ebury Manor, Belgravia, who carried that estate by her marriage into the possession of the Grosvenors. ”

“ After a great deal of agitation on the subject of cutting Q Street through, and putting a bridge across Rock Creek to connect with the city, the District government in 1915 moved the old house to its present location, for it had been sitting exactly in the path of progress all these years, there being a George Town Ordinance that a street could not be cut through without consent of the owner. ”

“ They passed Dupont Circle, where she showed the Leiter house, etc., and as they crossed P Street Bridge, she said, "Now we are coming into Georgetown where nobody lives but colored people and a few white people who can't get away." ”

“ STREET, GEORGE EDMUND (1824–1881) , architect, born at Woodford, Essex, on 20 June 1824, was the third son of Thomas Street, solicitor, by his second wife, Mary Anne Millington. The father, Thomas Street, whose business was in Philpot Lane, was the descendant of a Worcestershire family to which belonged also the judge, Sir Thomas Street [q. v.] About 1830, when his father moved to Camberwell, George was sent to a school at Mitcham, and subsequently to the Camberwell collegiate school, which he left in 1839. ”

“ The Oriental had given one look round, and disappeared with the agile rapidity of a cat up a narrow street a little further on. George followed, dashed round the corner, and found himself in a stone-paved alley with stables on each side. There was no human being to be seen; but a barking dog at the other end seemed to have been lately disturbed. George traversed the little court at a sharp run, found an opening, and went through into a street beyond, where a few people were passing to and fro with no appearance of excitement, and carriages and cabs were going both ways. ”

“ He preferred the more plebeian trails, the department-store infested thoroughfare to the west, with the clattering "El" road overhead; or Fourth Avenue to the east, beginning at the statue of "George the Veracious," running between the silent and terrible mountains, finally, with a shriek and a crash, to dive headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth Street, and never to be seen again; or even some purlieu of the great East Side, where he could sit listening at ease in the humble shop of Fitbad the Tailor. ”

“ George lunched leisurely at his hotel. Upon his return from Westchester he had gone directly to McDougle Street to be assured that there was a house numbered 19. Without difficulty he had found the place; it was in the row of old iron-balconied apartment houses a few blocks south of Washington Square, and No. 19 differed in no way from its neighbours even to the noisy children, without toys, tumbling about the sunken steps and dark basement door. St. George contented himself with walking past the house, for the mere assurance that the place existed dictated his next step. ”

“ Middlesex Street holds nothing picturesque or national; even its open-air market on Sunday morning can be paralleled by any Saturday afternoon scene in the little streets of Edgware Road, or in Walker’s Court, Soho. It is a street mainly of warehouses; Widegate Street and Sandys Row exhibit the oddity of narrow crookedness and no more. Petticoat Lane, where the shops are paltry, and the folk divide into too fat and too lean, is not even a mean street. ”

“ It is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, “if they look neglected, it’s because they are neglected. ”

“ Well, recalling the S. George on the south porch of Chartres, on what ground shall one dispute that?
Not merely the dates that Street will like may be foreseen, but the intellectual attitude and spiritual style: as he cared little for the architecture of the Renaissance, he will care no more for the masters of chiaroscuro, and the baroque style he will feel equally distasteful in the two arts. Lastly, his abiding love for Perugino and Francia is utterly in keeping with his Anglican faith; it recalls the very tone of the boyish letter about Lanercost. ”

“ At Mansion House she stopped for a moment to look at the turmoil: drays, motorbuses, cabs, cycles, entangled and threatening everywhere the little running black mites of humanity.
As Victoria passed the Bank and walked up Princes Street she felt hungry, for it was nearly one o'clock. She turned up a lane and stopped before a small shop which arrested her attention by its name above the door. It was called 'The Rosebud Café,' every letter of its name being made up of tiny roses; all the woodwork was painted white; the door was glazed and faced with pink curtains ”

“ On the block above, on Washington (30th) Street, in a white, frame house on the west side of the street, lived Captain de la Roche, who was the architect of Oak Hill Cemetery and of Saint John's Church where he was a vestryman when it was remodeled in 1840. Apropos of that, several years ago while I was living away from Georgetown for a short period of years, on one of my return visits, I was standing on the corner of Dumbarton Avenue and 31st Street waiting for a street-car. ”

“ Of course, before Stoddert (Q) Street was cut through, the Bowie house adjoined the property of Tudor Place, and they were on a level. I can remember when the street was paved, and now that it is one of the busiest boulevards of the city, it seems almost impossible to believe that back in the nineties a houseful of charming-girls, real old-fashioned belles, used often to "erupt" with their many beaux from their home on the neighboring corner, at eleven o'clock some evenings, and have a dance right in the middle of the street—two-steps and waltzes galore! ”

“ George was educated at home under private tutors, and afterwards assisted his father in the production of illustrated works on natural history. On the latter's death in 1822, he carried on certain of these, and, besides initiating others, dealt in shells and natural history objects, his place of business being first in King Street, Covent Garden, from which he removed to Regent Street, and finally to Great Russell Street. ”

“ George’s Church, in the Borough, into the high road which leads to the cast-iron bridge of Southwark, are no end of narrow courts, winding alleys, and ruined houses, which a bold-hearted man would hesitate to thread after dusk. Here stand numbers of houses which are unroofed and uninhabited. Years ago they were doomed to be pulled down, and it was resolved that a wide, open street should be built upon the space they now occupy: years may still roll away before they are removed. ”

“ William Lovering, Architect and General Builder—Begs leave to inform his friends and the public, that he has removed from the City of Washington to Gay Street, the next street above the Union Tavern in George Town, where he palns to estimate all manner of buildings, either with materials and labor, or labor only. Specimens of buildings suitable for the obtuse or acute angles of the streets in the City of Washington may be seen at his home. ”

“ Chapter XV Tudor Place and Congress (31st) Street
LIKE the brightest jewel in its crown of old houses, Tudor Place, now the home of Armistead Peter, junior, sits high and aloof on the heights of Georgetown. Its southern front, shown here, is the one most familiar to everyone, and it is the view that I looked out on every day of my life for more than a score of years from my father's house on Stoddert (Q) Street. ”

“ The Grand Imperial is extending all over London. Not only have hotels, undreamt of twenty years ago, sprung up at unexpected corners near the Strand and over the tube stations, not only have they taken over anything between two and six private houses at a time, but they are buying up site after site: a big one in Piccadilly near Down Street, also the St George’s Hospital site, perhaps. They are extending everywhere, communising life. ”

“ Through Regent Street, all congested with traffic, little figures laden with parcels darting like frightened ants under the horse's nose, then into the immensity of Whitehall, the cab stopped at the Stores in Victoria Street. [Pg 218]
Victoria had but recently joined. A store ticket and a telephone are the next best thing to respectability and the same thing as regards comfort. They go far to establish one's social position. Victoria struggled through the wedged crowd. Here and there boys and girls with flushed faces, who enjoyed being squashed. ”