Brook Street is one of the principal streets on the Grosvenor Estate in the exclusive central London district of Mayfair. It was developed in the first half of the 18th century and runs from Hanover Square to Grosvenor Square. The continuation from Grosvenor Square to Park Lane is called Upper Brook Street. Both sections originally consisted of typical London terraced houses, mostly built to individual designs. Some of them are quite grand and were designed by well known architects for aristocratic clients, especially near Grosvenor Square, while others are more modest. Some of the original houses survive while others have been replaced by buildings from a variety of periods.
Features of the street include the grand hotel Claridge's, at the junction with Davies Street, and Le Gavroche, a famous restaurant. The United States Embassy, which abuts Upper Brook Street and Grosvenor Square, has necessitated security arrangements which impede free access to the former. The Handel House Museum is also in Brook Street. A curiosity is the placing of two blue plaques on adjoining houses, numbers 23 and 25, both for famous musicians.
Read more about Brook Street: Former Residents, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words brook and/or street:
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If you don’t have a policeman to stop traffic and let you walk across the street like you are somebody, how are you going to know you are somebody?”
—John C. White (b. 1924)