Queen Street

“ Giles's parish runs down [Pg 27] Drury Lane between Long Acre and Great Queen Street. Of the last of these Strype says: "It is a street graced with a goodly row of large uniform houses on the south side, but on the north side is indifferent." The street was begun in the early years of the seventeenth century, but the building spread over a long time, so that we find the "goodly row of houses" on the south side to have been built by Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones, about 1646. A number of celebrated people lived in Great Queen Street. ”

“ In honour of this event, and to do honour to the visit of some French ambassadors, the King gave orders for a tournament to be held in Cheapside. The street was decorated with tapestries and silver draperies, pendant on the walls, and banners streaming from the roofs. The bright eyes of beauteous damsels glanced in the windows of the houses, and the street was filled with a crowd of gaily dressed holiday-makers. The lists were formed between Wood Street and Queen Street, and the ground bestrewn with sand to [53] prevent the horses slipping. ”

“ Indeed, there is a{157} quaint air of old fashion about this James Street rarely found in a London street.
Perhaps a gem of a house, as it might be called, is the one in Great Queen Street—No. 56, which was before alluded to. It consists of a most original, red-brick front, with pilasters adorned with rich and even elegant Corinthian capitals; above runs a no less rich cornice, while some piquant dormer windows give point and emphasis. Happily it has fallen into the hands of a worthy firm who deserve credit for having maintained it in its old perfect shape ”

“ Nos. 55–58, GREAT QUEEN STREET IN 1840.
Having regard to the many alterations which the premises have undergone, it is not surprising that very little of the first building is left. Of the original walls remaining, that to the street is the most important. Several of the chimney breasts, and parts of the walls to which they are attached, are also original work, but it is extremely doubtful if any of the external walls at the rear is coeval with the erection of the house. This will account for the fact that Evelyn’s “long gallery” [222] no longer exists. ”

“ As we have said, Queen Street contains many fine stores, and these are well stocked with a due mingling of a choice and a common class of goods. The necessities of life were found to be extraordinarily cheap. ”

“ A delicacy worthy, as it is an advantage to the inhabitants, and a beauty even with regard to the square itself.
Queen’s Square street, Long Ditch, Westminster.
Queen street. Many of these streets were thus named after the restoration, in honour of the royal family. 1. Bloomsbury. 2. Opposite King street in Cheapside; this street was widened, and had its name 241changed to Queen street, by act of Parliament, after the fire of London. 3. Great Russel street, Bloomsbury. 4. Great Windmill street. 5. Hog lane, St. Giles’s. 6. Hoxton. 7. Long Ditch, Westminster. 8. In the Mint, Southwark. 9. ”

“ In Queen's Gate hardly one lighted window showed that the houses were inhabited. So fierce was the clamor and storm of the broad street that men made haste to shut out every glimpse of the night, and the fanlights above the doors, or here and there a line of brightness where some draught had tossed the curtains apart, were the only signs of human life. Outside the broad pavements stared like surfaces of some canal, black and mirror-like, empty of passengers, catching every spark or hint of light from house and lamp, transforming it to a tall streak of glimmering wetness. ”

“ Andrew's square is grand; but Queen-street, for view, beats all the other parts of the town. It is a row, rather than a street; it being in front open to every thing that is beautiful, towards Belle Veue, Leith, the Forth, and the lofty hills of Fifeshire beyond it. The fronts of the houses, however, in Queen-street are not so complete as those in St. Andrew's square, because they are not all finished of hewn stone. The rough stone looks unhandsome; much like a comely face pitted with the small-pox.
Lord Moray's house stands pleasantly, and under the bank on which it is built is St. ”

“ Directly after dinner we went out in palanquins. The fare is only one dollar for the whole day. We were carried swiftly up broad streets bordered by palm trees and bamboos covered with mould because of the damp, tepid air. Queen’s Road, the principal street, is a large avenue bordered with beautiful English shops, and reminds one of London, only instead of commonplace constables, it is Punjabs—Hindoos—in big red turbans who keep order in the streets. On our way to the Botanic Gardens we saw English soldiers exercising in a large square. ”

“ No allusions have been found to his residence at No. 66, Great Queen Street. He is stated to have been living “next door to the Crown in Great Queen Street,” in 1744 [436] but that must refer to a different house. The sewer ratebook for 1734 shows a “Mr. Arne” resident at No. 34, Great Queen Street, but there is no proof that this was the musician. His residence at No. ”

“ Condition of repair. The house is in fair repair.
The Council’s collection contains:— [150] No. 18, Parker Street. Exterior of ground floor (photograph) .
No. 46, Parker Street. Exterior view, brick and weather boarded structure (photograph) .
No. 58, Parker Street. Exterior showing timber bay window (photograph) .
34 XXXII.—GREAT QUEEN STREET (General.) The eastern part of Great Queen Street was formed upon Purse Field, but the western and larger portion, together with Wild Street and Kemble Street, occupies the site of the field known in Elizabethan times as Aldwych Close. ”

“ Queen’s road, Queen street, Hammersmith. HAVELOCK VILLAS.
1 Groser William George
3 Lloyd Henry
1 Kemp W. The Chancellor
2 Tranter James, fruiterer
Harvey T. builder
3 Lorey Thomas, dairy
4 Flory H. grocer
Queensberry place, Cromwell road, South Kensington.
1 Lampston Henry
9 Shadwell Lawrence
Queensborough terrace, Kensington gardens, Bayswater. ”

“ New streets have been made, some of the principal of which are Queen Victoria Street, Southwark Street, Northumberland Avenue, Commercial Road, and the new thoroughfare from Oxford Street to Bethnal Green; many other leading thoroughfares, which had become inadequate for the increased traffic of the present day, have been widened and improved, greatly to the convenience and comfort of the public ”

“ This not only causes a certain amount of activity and trade, but also gives rise to such industries as saddlery, farm implements, etc. The town consists chiefly of two or three streets running parallel, the larger and more important being the High Street. In the middle of the High Street is a square or place, where once a week is held a market, at which all kinds of things are exposed for sale, from poultry to shoe laces. A corn exchange, a branch bank, the town hall, one or two shops, and the principal inn, fill up the square. ”

“ Our first diversion—the faintest shadow of a speculative interest—came with a slight stirring of the curtains of the berth across the way. For, even in the most dismal sleeping car, there is always the remote chance, when those green curtains stir, that the Queen of Sheba is all radiant within, and that she will presently appear, like sunrise. ”

“ In London streets, the unexpected is always happening; thus, through the hideous plate glass of a bar parlour, you may catch glimpses of waving trees and grey towers, and even the dreadful glare of London advertisement hoardings does not "wholly abolish or destroy" the ancient charm of the crowded, irregular City streets. A City of parallel lines and squares, such as the Colonials love! Perish the thought! Let them widen Southampton Row if they will, remove Holywell Street and King Street if they list; but let us at any rate keep to our old and devious ways through the heart of the City! ”

“ These parks have an area almost as great as that of the whole city, and are connected with the Denver boulevards by fine roads, so that some of the most spectacular motor trips in the country are within easy range of the "Queen City of the Plains."
But though the mountains give Denver her individuality, and though she has made the most of them, they have not proved an unmixed blessing. The riches which she has extracted from them, and the splendid setting that they give her, is the silver lining to her commercial cloud. ”

“ Queer Street is not a nice street to live in, my dear. Almost every town has a street of that name. Queer Street in your case would probably mean Miss Swishtale's Collegiate Academy for Young Ladies, Minerva House, Kelvick, where the little Douglases were sent to school by their step-mother, you know. ”

“ In the dull hazy London sunset Fopstone Road, which leads from Earl’s Court Road into Nevern Square, was quite deserted.
There is a silence and monotony in the eminently respectable thoroughfares in that particular district that, to their residents, is often very depressing. Traffic there is none save a stray hansom or a tradesman’s cart at long intervals, while street organs and even the muffin men avoid them because, unlike the poorer districts, they find no stray coppers and no customers. ”

“ At present it was the poor—the toiling millions now unemployed—who were the first to feel the pinch of hunger and its consequent despair. They filled the main arteries of London—Holborn, Oxford Street, the Strand, Regent Street, Piccadilly, the Haymarket, St. James's Street, Park Lane, Victoria Street, and Knightsbridge, overflowing northward into Grosvenor, Berkeley, Portman, and Cavendish Squares, Portland Place, and to the terraces around Regent's Park. The centre of London became congested. ”

“ One Woman’s Sin. Frith Street is the centre of the foreign quarter of London. The narrow, shabby thoroughfare retains, even on the brightest day in summer, its habitual depressing air of grimy cheerlessness; but enveloped in the yellow fog of a November evening, its aspect is unutterably dismal. Its denizens are a very shady colony, mostly the scum of Continental cities, who, owing to various causes, have been compelled to flee from the police and seek a safe asylum in the region between Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street. ”

“ If I may judge by my own experience and by what I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of doors empties the playhouses—for I would rather walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine plays in a hundred; and so think apparently multitudes of people, who stroll up and down the clean and broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright glare of the illumination extending nods and smiles—the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and delightful. ”

“ But all the want, and all the sin produced by want, in London, it would take all the volumes of the Conversations-Lexicon to recount. The streets—every street—is filled with it. Survey the thoroughfares at night. If any modest person is occasionally shocked at the exhibitions in Broadway, what would he say to Regent street, the Haymarket, the Strand, Fleet street, Cheapside, or fifty other streets in London? I have reckoned nearly three hundred unfortunate females, as they call themselves, in the space of one mile, on one side of the street alone, from Charing Cross to Temple Bar. ”

“ No one was in the vicinity, and we were walking very slowly, for, truth to tell, I desired to delay our parting until the very last moment. Of all the leafy spots in giant London, there is none so rural, so romantic, or so picturesque in summer as that portion of Kensington Gardens lying between Queen’s Gate and the Broad Walk. ”

“ I hate this incorrigible little thoroughfare; this New Street. It is full of bad smells, mangy little shops, obstructions, and bad characters. There is a yawning gin-palace at its south-western extremity. The odours of its eating-houses—especially of a seedy little French pension bourgeoise about half way up—are displeasing to my nostrils. The cigars vended in New Street are the worst in London, and the sweetstuff shops are mobbed—yes, mobbed—by children in torn pinafores who never have any pocket handkerchiefs. ”

“ All I knew was that we had turned off Regent Street about half-way up and that the house was situated in a quiet, rather dark street, an old-fashioned house of three storeys.
Eagerly in search of the place from which I had so narrowly escaped with my life I wandered in the night up and down those narrow thoroughfares, that puzzling maze of streets that lie between Regent Street and Soho Square—Brewer Street, Bridle Lane, Lexington Street, Poland Street and Berwick Street. ”

“ The flagged square behind the Exchange seems like a mart—the busy hum, the perpetual, headlong va-et-vient, the general bustle and brightness, are all suggestive, and the bye streets, such as the old Thames Street, that skirts the river, the oddly-named Garlick Hill, and others, have all a strange, foreign effect, being narrow lanes, yet having fine old churches and towers rising to a great height. ”

“ To those who really understand them, every one of the great, vital streets of the world has a soul as well as a body. The social invader from the West, the merchant whose establishment still found profit in Grand Street, the banker from Broad Street, or the ship's chandler from South, the club awakening to the fact that its quarters on Broadway or in one of the side streets near Irving Place was too far downtown, or in size inadequate to its growing membership—those were the agencies that wrought the Avenue's material development. ”

“ You see, then, that it matters not whether the name given to a new street be one which in itself suggests beauty, or one which suggests ugliness. In point of fact, it is generally the most pitiable little holes and corners that bear the most ambitiously beautiful names. To any one who has studied London, such a title as 'Paradise Court' conjures up a dark fetid alley, with untidy fat women gossiping in it, untidy thin women quarrelling across it, a host of haggard and shapeless children sprawling in its mud, and one or two drunken men propped against its walls. ”