Residents
Notable residents of Gower Street have included the architect George Dance the Younger, painter William de Morgan, and the Shaws. John Shaw, Sr.,and John Shaw, Jr., formed a famous nineteenth-century architectural partnership. Thomas Budd Shaw was a professor of English literature to the grand dukes of Russia. The painter John Everett Millais had a studio here.This was also the birthplace and childhood home of the artist Philip Zec and his eleven other siblings, although that was when it was still called George Street.
On 29 December 1838, Charles Darwin took the let of the furnished property at 12 Upper Gower Street (later 110 Gower Street), and wrote to tell his fiancée Emma Wedgwood of his delight at being the "possessor of Macaw Cottage". As their daughter Etty later recalled, "He used to laugh over the ugliness of their house in Gower St, and the furniture in the drawing-room, which he said combined all the colours of the macaw in hideous discord", and Darwin had christened the house "Macaw Cottage" in "allusion to the gaudy colours of the walls and furniture." He moved in on 31 December, and with Emma moved in on the day of their marriage, 29 January 1839. The development of Darwin's theory of natural selection made progress in this house, and their children William Erasmus Darwin and Anne Darwin were born there. In 1842 the family moved to Down House in the countryside, and the Gower Street house became part of the warehouse system of Messrs Schoolbred. On 13 December 1904 a London County Council blue plaque was put up, to "Charles Darwin Naturalist". The house suffered from bomb damage in 1941 during the Blitz, and was not repaired. In 1961 the site became part of the Biological Sciences building of University College London, with a new plaque. The long thin garden which backed on to Gower Mews North (later Malet Place) was incorporated into Foster Court car park in 1978.
-
Charles Darwin Plaque
-
George Dance Plaque
-
Plaque on Bonham-Carter House
On the wall of the University College building, an elaborate wall plaque carries the legend: "Close to this place Richard Trevithick (Born 1771 - Died 1833) Pioneer of High Pressure Steam ran in the year 1808 the first steam locomotive to draw passengers." It was erected by "The Trevithick Centenary Memorial Committee".
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in the Millais family house on Gower Street in the winter of 1848–49.
The Walloon (Belgian) poet Henri Michaux briefly resided in Gower Street in February 1931.
From 1976 until 1995 the headquarters of MI5 were an anonymous grey office block at 140 Gower Street, adjacent to the Euston Road. The site has since been redeveloped.
Read more about this topic: Gower Street (London)
Famous quotes containing the word residents:
“In most nineteenth-century cities, both large and small, more than 50 percent—and often up to 75 percent—of the residents in any given year were no longer there ten years later. People born in the twentieth century are much more likely to live near their birthplace than were people born in the nineteenth century.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)