Regent Street remains to this day one of the great and relatively rare achievements of town-planning in London. It arcs northwards from Piccadilly Circus past Oxford Circus to reach the southern edge of Regent's Park at Park Crescent. On either side of this broad street, 30 metres (120 feet) wide in places, and around the margins of the park, elegant houses, apartment buildings and shops, many of them designed by John Nash, became definitive of the Regency style.
The construction of Regent Street was necessitated by the congestion in the Great Swallow Street, Little Swallow Street and Marybone Street which tried to do office as the north-south conduit between the traditionally smart part of town (Piccadilly, St James's, Pall Mall) and the new terraces and squares such as Hanover Square
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Citation: Clark, Robert. "Thomas Nash begins building Regent Street, London". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 March 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=4428, accessed 23 November 2024.]