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221B Baker Street is the fictional London residence of the detective Sherlock Holmes , created by author Arthur Conan Doyle . The address could indicate an upstairs apartment (hence the B) of a residential house on what was originally a Georgian terrace. The B may, however, refer to the whole house. The street is considerably less narrow than is portrayed in some film versions of Holmes' adventures and is a substantial and busy north-south thoroughfare, which is at least as congested now as it would have been in Holmes' day. The site of the house - had it ever existed (see below) - would have been at the north end of Baker Street near Regents Park and Baker Street Tube Station . ''We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.'' THE "REAL" 221B BAKER STREET The street number 221b has never been officially assigned to any property in Baker Street, which is due to the fact that the local council only has the power to number the exterior of buildings, and not interior apartments. In Sherlock Holmes's time, the street numbers in Baker Street only went up to No. 100, which was presumably why Conan Doyle chose the entirely fictional number of '221b'. The part now encompassing 221 Baker Street was known in Doyle's lifetime as Upper Baker Street, and in Doyle's original first manuscript, Doyle had put the location of Holmes's house in "Upper Baker Street", indicating that if he had a house in mind it would have been in this section of the street that is situated north of Marylebone Road, close to Regent's Park. When street numbers were re-allocated in the 1930's, a block of eight numbers including 221 was assigned to an Art Deco building known as Abbey House, constructed in 1932 for the Abbey Road Building Society (subsequently the Abbey National ), which they occupied until 2002. Almost immediately, the company found itself receiving correspondence to Sherlock Holmes from people from all over the world, in such volumes that it appointed a permanent "Secretary to Sherlock Holmes" to deal with all the correspondence. In 1999, Abbey National sponsored the creation of a bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes which now stands at the entrance to Baker Street Tube Station . Sherlockian scholars have had a number of theories as to the 'real' address. The most likely ones place it in the 40-60 region on the even-numbered side of Baker Street, but every organisation has its own pet theory. With much of Baker Street devastated during the Blitz , little trace is left of the original buildings today, and most of them are of post-war construction, except for those houses that fortunately still stand in what was known as Upper Baker Street. THE SHERLOCK HOLMES MUSEUM The , keeping bees." This is an allusion to Dr. Joseph Bell , whom Holmes was based upon, who, after nearly solving the case of Jack The Ripper , retired in the English countryside and kept bees. In the story The Adventure Of The Second Stain from the Return Of Sherlock Holmes Series , Watson informs the readers that "Holmes has definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs". THE SHERLOCK HOLMES PUB Another version of Sherlock Holmes' apartment is located at the Sherlock Holmes, a pub on Northumberland Avenue near Charing Cross Railway Station . This was originally a small hotel, the Northumberland Arms, but was refurbished and reopened under its present name in December 1957. Its owners, Whitbread & Co., were fortunate to have in their possession the entire Sherlock Holmes exhibit originally put together by the Marylebone Borough Library and the Abbey National for the 1951 Festival Of Britain . The entire pub was restored to a late Victorian form and the exhibit, a very detailed replica of Holmes' fictional apartment, was installed on the upstairs floor. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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