221B Baker Street

London. What kind of thing that comes to your mind when you heard that word?

London Tower.

Big Ben.

London Eye.

Tower Bridge.

Windsor Castle.

Or, Baker Street?

Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. it is named after builder William Baker, ho laid the street out in the 18th century. The area was orignally high class residential, but now is mainly occupied by commercial premises.

Baker St is a busy thoroughfare, lying in postcode areas NW1/W1 and forming part of the A41 there. It runs south from Regent's Park, the junction with Park Road, parallel to Gloucester Place, meeting Marylebone Road, Portman Square and Wigmore Street. At the junction with Wigmore St, Baker St turns into Orchard Street, which ends when it meet Oxford Street. After portman Square the road continues as Orchard Street.

The Street is Served by the London Underground by Baker Street tube station, one of the world's oldest surviving underground stations. Next door is Transport for London's lost property office.

A significant robbery of a branch of Lloyds Banks took place on Baker Street in 1971.

But not. I won't write about the whole Baker Street. I just going to write about a building on 221B Baker Street. Guess what is it?

221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, created by author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the United Kingdom, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter may indicate a separate address within a larger, often residential building. Baker Street in Holmes' time was a high-class residential district, and Holmes' apartment was probably part of a Georgian terrace.

When the "Sherlock Holmes" stories were first published, street numbers in Baker Street did not go as high as 221, which was presumably why Conan Doyle chose a higher street number for the location of his hero, to prevent any person's actual residence from being affected.

The section north of Marylebone Road near Regent's Park – now including 221 Baker Street – was known in Conan Doyle's lifetime as Upper Baker Street. In his first manuscript, Conan Doyle put Holmes' house in Upper Baker Street, indicating that if he had a house in mind, it would have been there. However, a British crime novelist named Nigel Morland claimed that, late in Conan Doyle's life, he identified the junction of Baker Street and George Street, about 500 metres south of Marylebone Road, as the location of 221B. Sherlockian experts have also held to alternative theories as to where the original 221B was located and have maintained that it was further down Baker Street.

The street number 221B was assigned to the Sherlock Holmes Museum on 27 March 1990 (replacing the logical address 239 Baker Street) when the Leader of Westminster City Council, Lady Shirley Porter, unveiled a blue plaque signifying the address of 221B Baker Street. She was invited to renumber the museum's building to coincide with its official opening (and because the number 221B had not been included in the original planning consent for the museum granted in October 1989).

Jean Conan Doyle made clear her lack of enthusiasm for the museum when she was asked about it. She was very much against the idea of suggesting that her father's creation was a real person and knew that the presence of the museum would reinforce the idea in the minds of many that Holmes had really existed.

This idea was strengthened further by the presence of a commemorative blue plaque on the outside that states the years of Holmes's supposed residency. Though the plaque is similar in design to those erected by English Heritage as part of the London-wide plaque scheme, it is not a part of that scheme, as their selection criteria rule out the commemoration of entirely fictional characters.

The Museum did offer Dame Jean the opportunity to create a room in the museum dedicated to her father, but this offer was refused, and since then the last remaining possessions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been sold off at auction.

 

Sherlock Holmes "Sitting Room"

 

The table set in "Sherlock Holmes' Room"

 

Sherlock's Laboratory

 

"Dr. Watson's Room"

 The typewriter at the end time of the 19th century

 

"Dr. Watson's Room", books.

 

Bathroom

 

Sherlock Holmes Museum, Baker Street,"The Study",

 

Cyclist sculpture, put on display to illustrate the short story 

"The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist"

 

"Mrs Hudson's Room", fireplace

 "Dr. Watson's Room", washstand.

The statue of Sherlock Holmes in London, sculpted by John Doubleday, stands near the site of the fictional detective's home at 221B Baker Street. Unveiled on 23 September 1999, it was funded by the Abbey National building society, whose headquarters were on the supposed site of the famous address. As no site was available on Baker Street itself the statue is outside Baker Street tube station, on Marylebone Road. Doubleday had previously produced a statue of Holmes for the town of Meiringen in Switzerland, below the Reichenbach Falls from which the detective fell to his death in the story "The Final Problem".

 The 3-metre-high statue depicts Holmes wearing an Inverness cape and a deerstalker and holding a pipe, attributes first given to him by Sidney Paget, who illustrated Arthur Conan Doyle's stories for The Strand Magazine. It is located outside Baker Street tube station on Marylebone Road, near both the detective's fictional home at 221B Baker Street and the Sherlock Holmes Museum between numbers 237 and 241.

sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_Street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/221B_Baker_Street

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_Museum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Sherlock_Holmes,_London