Farewell, lovely Bond Street

property on the Monopoly board. When Bond Street was extended in the 18th century, the northern extension was named New Bond Street, while the original section added ‘Old’ to its name.

The Fine Art Society had moved into its premises at 148 New Bond Street shortly after its foundation in 1876, and was in at the birth of Bond Street as the Mecca of the art world.

The following year, Sir Coutts and Lady Lindsay opened the Grosvenor Gallery. The ‘greenery-yallery Grosvenor Gallery’ of Gilbert and Sullivan instantly attracted leading artists,

along with a well-heeled aristocratic clientele.

Whistler exhibited Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling

Rocket there, provoking Ruskin’s accusation of ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’, and precipitating a libel trial. Awarded only token damages, Whistler was bankrupted; but the Fine Art Society stepped in, sending him to Venice.

In the mid-1870s, the Manchester-based firm of Thomas Agnew & Sons relocated to 43 Old Bond Street, and other galleries followed. Sotheby’s, which had taken its current premises in 1917, added glamour to the street’s worldwide reputation for scholarship and integrity with the Jakob Goldschmidt Impressionist 1958 sale, the first of many black-tie events.

This new glitz began to attract the fashion houses. Shop units were bulldozed to create glittering emporia. Among the victims was my old employer, the Fine Art Society. It closed last summer – the end of an era.

By Peyton Skipwith, who receives £50. Readers are invited to send in their own 400-word submissions about the past More Memory Lanes on the Oldie App

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