Early History
The street was called "Queen Street" from around 1605-9, and "Great Queen Street" from around 1670.
In 1646 William Newton was given permission to build fourteen large houses, each with a forty foot frontage, on the south side of the street. Although he did not build all the hoses himself, selling on some the plots, they were built to a uniform design, in a classical style, with Ionic pilasters rising through two storeys from the first floor to the eaves. The regular design of the houses proved influential According to John Summerson they "laid down the canon which put an end to gabled individualism, and provided a discipline for London's streets which was to endure for two hundred years"
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