While London with its curving short streets and impossible numbering may seem a classic example of what I’ve heard termed urban organicism, the development of a number of its squares is surprisingly well planned. What put me in mind of this was my mention, a blog entry or two ago, of 6, Fitzroy Square, a terrace house in a square designed by Robert Adam. What’s not a well known aspect of Adam’s working life was that of a real estate developer, along with his brothers James and William. His Adelphi development along the Thames near the Strand, of which almost nothing survives, consisted of riverside warehouses below with domestic terrace housing above. With the Thames at that time very much a working river, and the riverside bays designed to handle items of commerce, the Adelphi development was conceived as a live-work space, not unlike, albeit then a bit grittier, similar developments today.
But of course, practicality is only a single feature of any real estate development, with aesthetics and snob appeal functioning more than anything else to yield it remunerative to the developer. The growth of the middle class in the 18th century, and it was mostly the middle class that lived in terrace housing, the desire to imitate their aristocratic betters was often met with their ability to purchase, if not a country seat, than something in their own urban environment that at least mimicked a stately home. Using Fitzroy Square as an example, Adam, and any number of other developers, met the aspirational need of the rising middle class with the development of the palace fronted terrace. With all manner of fashionable Palladian influences, from rusticated ground floors to tripartite windows, and in this instance faced with expensive Portland stone, the southerly range of Fitzroy Square certainly resembles the façade of a stately home- ignoring, of course, the large number of front doors that marked every several bays as the entrance to an individual dwelling.
Aristocrats themselves were clearly not put off by the notion of this, with Fitzroy Square itself using the family name of the Dukes of Grafton. The Fitzroy family did then, and does now over two centuries on, own the freehold on a considerable amount of the surrounding real estate. Their near neighbors, the Russell family, were at the same time likewise letting leases for the development of some of their London real estate- places like Russell Square and Bedford Square were the result. If you’ve not heard of the Russell family, you might know them better as the Dukes of Bedford. Their family seat of Woburn Abbey is to a great extent maintained out of the rents the family receives from their London holdings.
Although less vaunted in design and materials than its near neighbor, Bedford Square nevertheless fared a bit better than Fitzroy Square. With the death of Robert Adam, and the economic depression brought on by the Napoleonic Wars, only the east and south ranges of the square were completed by the Adam brothers, with the west and north ranges- faced with less expensive stucco- completed later in the 19th century. Until the last 20 years or so, Fitzroy Square was the centre of a louche, bohemian neighborhood, whose iconoclastic residents included Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw. The infamous house on Cleveland Street, the male brothel whose denizens inadvertently helped to bring about the downfall of Oscar Wilde, is just one street away from the square.