Harley Street - London, UK - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

The Harley Street website tells us:

Harley Street has always been an attractive address, and is one of the most famous streets in London.  Over the years an eclectic collection of residents have inhabited this exclusive area of Marylebone, including writers, musicians, politicians, soldiers and scientists.

Edward Harley inherited Harley Street from his wife, Henrietta Cavendish Hollis, and developed the grid of streets around Harley Street between 1715 and 1720.  Today, Harley Street is owned by the de Walden family and the Howard de Walden Estate has been managing almost all of the 92 acres of real estate from Marylebone High Street, Portland Place and from Wigmore Street to Marylebone Road for the past 300 years.  The Estate was responsible for the redevelopment of many of the houses in 1900, which followed strict guidelines to maintain the original Georgian style architecture.

Harley Street enjoys a long-standing reputation as a centre of private medical excellence and the district around Harley Street is more often referred to as Medical London because it has several private hospitals within the vicinity and the largest concentration of medical proficiency in the world.  All the latest technology and cutting edge medical expertise has been moved into the area, and not surprisingly Harley Street is a highly desirable location from which to practice.
Harley Street door plates.

The area attracts a large ever growing, number of top medical practitioners, dentists, psychiatrists and plastic surgeons providing first class care, each of whom require a licence from the Estate in order to practice.  The Estate has always been particular about the type of people allowed to practice from Harley Street, and between the two world wars for example an application from a resident to let out a room to a dancing teacher was strongly rejected.  Until after the Second World War, which was a real catalyst for change, masseurs and psychologists were treated with suspicion.

Today, there are some 1,500 professional medical practitioners in and around the Harley Street area, offering a broad range of services from complementary medicine to cosmetic surgery and the range and quality of services available continues to expand as new treatments and new diagnostic techniques emerge.  The The Harley Street Clinic receives patients from all over the world and has established a ground breaking cancer centre, which is affiliated to the London Cancer Group and contains the latest oncology technology and expert care for cancer patients.

Harley Street is at the forefront in medical science and technology advancements and firmly on the map for medical excellence.

The same website also tells us:

At the beginning of the 18th century the village of Marylebone consisted of just a smattering of houses, but as London began to grow during the Georgian period many attractive houses were developed and by 1792-1799 the whole area from Oxford Street to the New Road (Marylebone Road) was awash with beautiful, large Georgian styled houses, known by their rectangular sash windows and parapets which give the appearance of a flat roof.  Cavendish Square, in particular, became a magnet for the fashionable and wealthy.

Harley Street is owned by the de Walden family and managed by the Howard de Walden Estate.  In 1711 the grid of streets around Harley Street, known as The Estate, was passed to Henrietta Cavendish Holles (the Duke of Newcastle's daughter) who married Edward Harley (the 2nd Earl of Oxford).  Between 1715 and 1720, Edward, with the assistance of architect John Prince, decided to develop the streets around Cavendish Square for residential purposes naming many of the streets after members of the family.  When Edward died the Estate passed to his daughter, Margaret Cavendish Harley who married the second Duke of Portland, and the area became known as The Portland Estate.

The Dukes of Portland had ownership for five generations until the fifth Duke died without issue in 1879 and the land passed to Lucy Joan Bentinck, widow of the 6th Baron Howard de Walden and thus it became the Howard de Walden Estate.

By 1860 many doctors had moved into Harley Street, choosing the area because of the quality housing, the central location as well as the accessibility to major train stations such as Kings Cross St Pancras and Marylebone.  As more and more doctors moved to the area they invited colleagues to work with them from their prestigious homes and Harley Street began to thrive as a medical centre, especially after the Medical Society of London opened in Chandos Street in 1873 then the Royal Society of Medicine in Wimpole Street in 1912.

Since the nineteenth century the number of doctors, hospitals and medical organisations in and around Harley Street has greatly increased.  Records show that there were around 20 doctors in 1860, 80 by 1900 and almost 200 by 1914.  When the National Health Service was established in 1948 there were around 1,500.

Among the many famous and talented doctors to have practiced in Harley Street over the years was the great British surgeon and polymath Sir Henry Thompson in the 1870s who specialised in surgery of the genito-urinary tract and was appointed surgeon-extraordinaire to the King of Brussels, and Doctor Edward Bach who practiced from Harley Street in the 1920s as a specialist in vaccines and bacteriology before moving to the London Homeopathic Hospital then developing the Bach Flower Remedies.

Today there are over 3,000 people employed in the Harley Street area and the private clinics are modern, comfortable and welcoming; a far cry from the original days when Harley Street doctors arranged their own appointments and dealt with correspondence by letter in candle light and resided in the house itself.  Today, as you would expect, practices are run by highly qualified, competent and professional medical and auxiliary staff using state of the art technology and equipment.