James Street is a street in the

Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it me ...

district of the City of Westminster, London, off Oxford Street, that is known for the high number of restaurants and bars that it contains.

Location

James Street runs from the junction of Mandeville Place and

Wigmore Street Wigmore Street is a street in the City of Westminster, in the West End of London. The street runs for about 600 yards parallel and to the north of Oxford Street between Portman Square to the west and Cavendish Square to the east. It is named aft ...

in the north to the junction of

Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and ...

and Gilbert Street in the south. On its western side it is joined by Gray's Yard in the north, which is a gated cul-de-sac with flats above, Picton Place and Barrett Street.

History

James Street was laid out around 1761–9. In 1936, the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

tried to rename the street Marylebone High Street, along with

Thayer Street Thayer Street in Providence, Rhode Island is a popular destination for students of the area's nearby schools of Brown University, Moses Brown School, Hope High School, Wheeler School, RISD, Providence College, Johnson & Wales University, and ...

and Mandeville Place so that the whole north–south route from

to Marylebone Road would have the same name. The proposal was opposed by both the occupants of Mandeville Place, who felt that they did not want to lose the higher class associations of the street in order to be associated with shopkeepers, and the shopkeepers and small traders of the other streets who worried about the cost of the change, possible customer confusion, and the association with Marylebone Road rather than the posher Oxford Street they were nearer. The proposal did not go ahead."Street fighting men"
Tom Hughes, ''Marylebone Journal''. Retrieved 27 April 2015.

Buildings

The street is mostly composed of terraced houses with small shops and restaurants on the ground floor and some larger buildings on the western side. Number 56 on the east side is a

grade II listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

with

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

References

External links

Streets in the City of Westminster Marylebone {{Coord, 51, 30, 55.42, N, 0, 9, 2.81, W, scale:1563_region:GB, display=title