approach to his residence, Carlton House. The new street was planned by John Nash. In
his 1812 proposal (figure 4.2) the full width of Portland Place has been extended to
Oxford Street, where it ends in a round place roughly where Oxford Circus is today. The
street then continues, still as wide but now in a somewhat more easterly direction. This
part was to be furnished with colonnades and shops. The street ends at the corner of a
square, almost entirely occupied by a public building, and then continues from the
diagonally opposite corner via a round place at the crossing with Piccadilly (roughly the
present Piccadilly Circus) and on to Carlton House.4
Work on the future Regent Street started in 1814, following an alternative plan also
made by Nash (figure 4.3). In this the square had been abandoned and the new street
north of Piccadilly led in a wide curve round some plots whose acquisition had proved
too expensive. Great difficulties faced the implementation of the project, but an important
factor was that the Crown owned more than half the plots involved. However a great
many plots still had to be expropriated and many leases purchased. That the street could
be completed at all, was largely due to Nash’s own skill. Not only did he plan the street
and many of the buildings, but he was also personally involved in several major
transactions to do with buying and selling the land. As work proceeded, however,
substantial changes were made in the original plans. For instance, as George IV the
former Prince Regent lost interest in Carlton House and became more concerned about
Buckingham Palace. Carlton House, a fundamental component of the original scheme,
was thus demolished to make room for Carlton House Terrace, which can hardly be said
to provide a fitting termination to the new street.
What made Regent Street one of the major achievements of nineteenth-century urban
design was its central section, the Quadrant, where Nash developed the crescent model by
introducing houses on both sides and lining his street with colonnades. Nash built the
Quadrant at his own expense, when no-one else was willing to take the project on, which
meant that it could be given the architectural unity the rest of the street lacks. The
Quadrant has a dynamic force which can still be felt despite major alterations, and it
provides an excellent validation of the thesis that brilliant architectural solutions are often
the result of difficult conditions.
In its original form Regent Street presented a varied but nonetheless coherent picture,
lacking the monumentality of its contemporary relative, the Rue de Rivoli, but also
without the formal character of the Parisian street.