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Princes Street
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Princes Street
Princes Street (Scottish Gaelic: Sràid nam Prionnsachan) is one of the major thoroughfares in central Edinburgh, Scotland, and the main shopping street in the capital. It is the southernmost street of Edinburgh's New Town, stretching around 1.2 km (three quarters of a mile) from Lothian Road in the west, to Leith Street in the east. The street has few buildings on the south side and looks over Princes Street Gardens allowing panoramic views of the Old Town, Edinburgh Castle, as well as the valley between. Most of the street is limited to trams, buses and taxis with only the east end open to all traffic.
The street lies on the line of a medieval country lane known as the Lang Dykes and under the first plan for the New Town was to have been called St Giles Street after the patron saint of Edinburgh. However, when King George III was shown a print or drawing of the proposed New Town by Sir John Pringle, he objected to the name as he associated it with the notorious slum area of St Giles, London. At Pringle's suggestion, the street was instead named Prince's Street after King George's eldest son, Prince George, Duke of Rothesay (later King George IV) as recounted in his 1767 letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. By the late 1830s the apostrophe in the name (which had also sometimes been written as Princes' Street) had largely fallen out of use, giving the street its present-day name of Princes Street. The apparent plurality in the name has given rise to various erroneous explanations of the name.
It was laid out according to formal plans for Edinburgh's New Town, now known as the First New Town. These were devised by the architect James Craig and building began around 1770. Princes Street represented a critical part of the plan, being the outer edge, facing Edinburgh Castle and the original city, Edinburgh Old Town. Originally all buildings had the same format: set back from the street with stairs down to a basement and stairs up to the ground floor with two storeys and an attic above. Of this original format only one such property, no.95, remains in its original form.
Through the 19th century most buildings were redeveloped at a larger scale and the street evolved from residential to mainly retail uses.
From the 1880s the street, with its commanding views in combination with great ease of access, became a popular street upon which to locate hotels. The railway companies created huge anchor hotels at either end: the Caledonian Hotel to the west, and North British Hotel to the east. In between were the Royal British Hotel, Old Waverley Hotel, and Mount Royal Hotel, all of which survive. Princes Street was also home to two leading department stores, Jenners founded in 1838 and rebuilt in 1893–1895, and Forsyth's built in 1906–1907, both technically advanced and architecturally ornate buildings for their time.
By the 1930s the architecture of Princes Street had a very mixed character. The Abercrombie Plan of 1949 proposed tighter control of design to create a more coherent appearance. This theme was taken up by the Princes Street Panel, whose 1967 report proposed comprehensive redevelopment with Modernist buildings to incorporate a first-floor level walkway, theoretically doubling the shopping frontage. The plan was partially put into operation, resulting in the demolition of seven old buildings, and the erection of seven new, before the approach was dropped in the 1970s. Two of the new buildings, British Home Stores at number 64, and the New Club at numbers 84–87, are now listed buildings.
There has been controversy over buildings from the latter half of the 20th century on Princes Street. This has prompted plans[when?] to demolish the BHS and the Marks & Spencer buildings, in an effort to improve the status of the street. Another problem has been that upper floors are often used for storage, rather than as office, retail or living space. At an early stage in post-World War II designs for the street, a "high level walkway" was planned, as a further shopping frontage for the first floor level, in lieu of the other side of the street. However the walkway as built was never more than a number of isolated balconies and in practice the Royal Bank of Scotland was the only business to maintain a frontage at this level for any length of time; that branch of the bank closed early in the 21st century, leaving the upper walkway largely forgotten.
Princes Street was the scene of rioting in 2005 related to the 31st G8 summit referred to in the press as "The Battle of Princes Street".
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Princes Street AI simulator
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Princes Street
Princes Street (Scottish Gaelic: Sràid nam Prionnsachan) is one of the major thoroughfares in central Edinburgh, Scotland, and the main shopping street in the capital. It is the southernmost street of Edinburgh's New Town, stretching around 1.2 km (three quarters of a mile) from Lothian Road in the west, to Leith Street in the east. The street has few buildings on the south side and looks over Princes Street Gardens allowing panoramic views of the Old Town, Edinburgh Castle, as well as the valley between. Most of the street is limited to trams, buses and taxis with only the east end open to all traffic.
The street lies on the line of a medieval country lane known as the Lang Dykes and under the first plan for the New Town was to have been called St Giles Street after the patron saint of Edinburgh. However, when King George III was shown a print or drawing of the proposed New Town by Sir John Pringle, he objected to the name as he associated it with the notorious slum area of St Giles, London. At Pringle's suggestion, the street was instead named Prince's Street after King George's eldest son, Prince George, Duke of Rothesay (later King George IV) as recounted in his 1767 letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. By the late 1830s the apostrophe in the name (which had also sometimes been written as Princes' Street) had largely fallen out of use, giving the street its present-day name of Princes Street. The apparent plurality in the name has given rise to various erroneous explanations of the name.
It was laid out according to formal plans for Edinburgh's New Town, now known as the First New Town. These were devised by the architect James Craig and building began around 1770. Princes Street represented a critical part of the plan, being the outer edge, facing Edinburgh Castle and the original city, Edinburgh Old Town. Originally all buildings had the same format: set back from the street with stairs down to a basement and stairs up to the ground floor with two storeys and an attic above. Of this original format only one such property, no.95, remains in its original form.
Through the 19th century most buildings were redeveloped at a larger scale and the street evolved from residential to mainly retail uses.
From the 1880s the street, with its commanding views in combination with great ease of access, became a popular street upon which to locate hotels. The railway companies created huge anchor hotels at either end: the Caledonian Hotel to the west, and North British Hotel to the east. In between were the Royal British Hotel, Old Waverley Hotel, and Mount Royal Hotel, all of which survive. Princes Street was also home to two leading department stores, Jenners founded in 1838 and rebuilt in 1893–1895, and Forsyth's built in 1906–1907, both technically advanced and architecturally ornate buildings for their time.
By the 1930s the architecture of Princes Street had a very mixed character. The Abercrombie Plan of 1949 proposed tighter control of design to create a more coherent appearance. This theme was taken up by the Princes Street Panel, whose 1967 report proposed comprehensive redevelopment with Modernist buildings to incorporate a first-floor level walkway, theoretically doubling the shopping frontage. The plan was partially put into operation, resulting in the demolition of seven old buildings, and the erection of seven new, before the approach was dropped in the 1970s. Two of the new buildings, British Home Stores at number 64, and the New Club at numbers 84–87, are now listed buildings.
There has been controversy over buildings from the latter half of the 20th century on Princes Street. This has prompted plans[when?] to demolish the BHS and the Marks & Spencer buildings, in an effort to improve the status of the street. Another problem has been that upper floors are often used for storage, rather than as office, retail or living space. At an early stage in post-World War II designs for the street, a "high level walkway" was planned, as a further shopping frontage for the first floor level, in lieu of the other side of the street. However the walkway as built was never more than a number of isolated balconies and in practice the Royal Bank of Scotland was the only business to maintain a frontage at this level for any length of time; that branch of the bank closed early in the 21st century, leaving the upper walkway largely forgotten.
Princes Street was the scene of rioting in 2005 related to the 31st G8 summit referred to in the press as "The Battle of Princes Street".
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