221B Baker Street
221B Baker Street is the London address of the fictional novel detective Sherlock Holmes , invented by the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . In the UK, postal addresses with a number followed by a letter indicate an address of their own in a larger building, usually a residential building. The Baker Street was Holmes 'times a classy residential district and Holmes' apartment was possibly part of a Georgian terrace house .
At the time the Holmes novels were published, the addresses on Baker Street did not go as far as 221. Baker Street was not expanded until later, and in 1932 the Abbey National Building Society moved to the building at 219-229 Baker Street. Abbey National employed its own secretary for many years to answer all letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. In 1990, a blue plaque stating "221b Baker Street" was placed on the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which resides elsewhere on the same block, and a 15 year dispute broke out between Abbey National and the Holmes Museum as to who had the right to 221B Receiving mail addressed to Baker Street. Since Abbey House was closed in 2005, the Holmes Museum address has not been objected to, despite its actual location between number 237 and 241 on Baker Street.
Doyle's intentions
When the Sherlock Holmes stories were first published, the street numbers on Baker Street only went up to 100. Doyle chose the higher street number for the location of his hero, presumably to prevent a possible impairment of a person's actual residence.
The stretch north of Marylebone Road , near Regent's Park , was known as Upper Baker Street in Doyle's lifetime. In his first manuscript, Doyle had placed the Holmes house on Upper Baker Street, which is a clear indication that he would have located the location of the house there.
Other alternative theories exist as to where the original 221B may have been. The empty “Camden House”, which, according to the short story The Empty House , was directly across the street, provides a point of orientation . Ultimately, however, none of the well-known buildings should completely meet the criteria from the stories.
Abbey National
When the buildings along the streets were renumbered in the 1930s , an Art Deco building known as the Abbey House was given the odd numbers 215-229. That house was for the Abbey Road Building Society in 1932 was built and was used by this company and its legal successor (who subsequently renamed Abbey National plc) until 2002.
In 2018, based on court documents and the Panama Papers, it became known that the building belonged at least in part to relatives of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev .
Secretary to Sherlock Holmes
Virtually immediately to the Company Fans Sherlock Holmes received correspondence from all over the world - in such proportions that for processing a permanent secretary for Sherlock Holmes ( english The Secretary to Sherlock Holmes was appointed). The well-known Holmes researcher Richard Lancelyn Green put together a book with the most interesting letters.
souvenir
The building was renovated in the early 1980s. In the first phases of the renovation work carried out, thousands of relatively well-preserved bricks were removed, embossed with 221 B , and sold on site to interested parties for £ 2 each. The proceeds were donated to five different charities on the occasion of the International Year of the Disabled .
Bronze plaque
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The bronze plaque on the former Abbey House HQ
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Bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes at dusk
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A bronze plaque on the front of Abbey House showed Sherlock Holmes' silhouette with a quote from the novel A Study in Scarlet underneath. It was unveiled on October 7, 1985 by Holmes actor Jeremy Brett . Towards the end of the 2000s it was removed due to pending painting work on the building's exterior. The whereabouts of this tablet are currently unknown.
Bronze statue
In 1999, on the occasion of its 150-year history, Abbey National sponsored the construction of a bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes, which stands above ground at the entrance to Baker Street Underground Station .
The Sherlock Holmes Museum
The Sherlock Holmes Museum is housed within a Grade I listed townhouse dating back to 1815, very similar to what is described in the stories, and is located between 237 and 241 Baker Street. It shows exhibits in period rooms , wax figures and Holmes devotional objects. And as a highlight of the museum: the famous living room with a view of Baker Street.
Street number 221B was assigned to the Sherlock Holmes Museum on March 27, 1990 when Westminster City Council Chair Lady Shirley Porter unveiled a blue plaque pointing to 221B Baker Street. She had been invited to renumber the building when the museum opened.
The Sherlock Holmes pub
Another version of Sherlock Holmes' apartment is in The Sherlock Holmes pub at 10 Northumberland Street near London Charing Cross Station . Originally a small hotel called the Northumberland Arms, it was reopened under the current name in December 1957. The owners, Whitbread & Co, acquired the entire Sherlock Holmes exhibit in 1957, which the Marylebone Borough Library and Abbey National had put together for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The pub has been restored in a late Victorian style, and the exhibition (a detailed replica of Holmes' fictional apartment) is located on the first floor.
Tributes
- Dr. Gregory House, from the series Dr. House , lives at 221 Baker Street, Apartment B, Princeton, NJ, 08542.
- Shinichi Kudo, the protagonist of Gosho Aoyama's Detective Conan series , lives at 2 / 21B Beika (transcribed to Baker in English) Street. Many other landmarks and brand names in the series also pay tribute to the famous address, including the Teitan Elementary School that Conan Edogawa goes to.
- In the 26th full-length cartoon from Walt Disney Studios , the protagonist Basil, the great mouse detective, also lives at 221B Baker Street.
Web links
- The Sherlock Holmes Museum (English)
- The Sherlock Holmes Restaurant (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Roger Johnson, Jean Upton: The Sherlock Holmes Miscellany. The History Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7524-7152-5 , pp. 80 f.
- ↑ Christopher Redmond: Sherlock Holmes Handbook. Dundurn Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-55488-446-9 , pp. 147 f.
- ↑ Max de Haldevang: The unsolved mystery of who owns Sherlock Holmes's original £ 130 million home. In: Quartz , April 5, 2018, accessed August 21, 2019.
- ↑ Richard Lancelyn Green: The Sherlock Holmes Letters. University of Iowa Press, 1986, ISBN 0-87745-161-3 .
- ^ Siggi Weidemann: Sherlock Holmes' mailbox. In: Die Zeit , No. 7/1984, February 10, 1984, accessed on August 21, 2019.
- ↑ Westminster Libraries & Archives: 1951 Sherlock Holmes Exhibition Catalog. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
Coordinates: 51 ° 31 ′ 24 ″ N , 0 ° 9 ′ 30 ″ W.