Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Belt
Had to memorize....
With GoogleMaps anybody can navigate any city on their first day there -- Except the whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing they got going on over there -- piece of cake.
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There’s nothing worse than a cabbie that doesn’t know where they’re going. Just last night I had to dress a guy down because he tried to drop me on the wrong street (behind my building, which is where Google Maps puts the pin) because he clearly didn’t know the street, which in a black cab means no tip.
Anyway, London’s streets are partly the product of the city being built around medieval (or older) roads between towns/villages, partly the fact that the London metropolis absorbed hundreds of such towns/villages as it grew, and partly because big chunks of it were developed by private landowners from old agricultural estates.
For example, Mayfair and Belgravia were developed (and are still owned by) the Grosvenors, Marylebone is the Harold de Walden estate, etc.
Each of these was developed in a cohesive way, but one doesn’t sync of with the next. So the squares of Belgravia are all white stucco terraces...
https://goo.gl/maps/Jo5yd7RNKLjKcPFCA
On the other side of Sloane Street, the Cadogan estate is red brick apartments modelled vaguely after the Dutch architecture of the time...
https://goo.gl/maps/7YiCC1yZnsLG5pmL8
The Pimlico Grid was designed by the 19th century architect Thomas Cubitt...
https://goo.gl/maps/gDgH9FbZ9hQqjC8D8
Marylebone is Georgian...
https://goo.gl/maps/pJCuzsFUhwnLLdVe7
The concentric circular roads of Notting Hill were originally a racecourse...
https://goo.gl/maps/gpLkeo8aEV5p9f9i6
And then wherever you have squares and gardens surrounded by houses, these were usually private development schemes. It’s just that the 18th and early 19th century ones were vastly better than anything Toll Brothers or KB Homes do today.