The grant by Charles II of the freehold of the site of St. James's Square and other adjacent property to trustees for the Earl of St. Albans was made on 1 April 1665. The square itself took shape in the 1670's. But the building activities of St. Albans and his plans for the freehold area dated from the lengthening, in September 1662, of his leasehold interest in Pall Mall (St. James's) Field until 1720.

On the strength of this lease St. Albans began to develop the field, and there are a number of references to his activities in the following year. Sir Balthazar Gerbier's Counsel and Advise to all Builders of 1663 contains among its numerous dedications one to St. Albans and mentions the burning of lime by 'your Lordships Builders in St. James-fields'. In May the French traveller Monconys described Pall Mall as situated 'au côté d'une grandissime place qui peut être quatre fois la place Royale et deux fois Belle-Cour; elle appartient au Milord St. Alban, qui y va faire faire des bâtiments qui la détruiront'.

Hostility to the development was felt by the City of London, probably from fear of competition for water supply: but the royal support for St. Albans's project discouraged opposition. In September Pepys wrote: 'my Lord Mayor told me . . . that this City is as well watered as any city in the world, and that the bringing the water to the City hath cost it first and last above £300,000; but by the new building and the building of St. James's by my Lord St. Albans, which is now about (and which the City stomach I perceive highly, but dare not oppose it), were it now to be done, it would not be done for a million of money.'

The royal interest had been cited by St. Albans himself when in August 1663 he had petitioned for a grant of the freehold of the intended site of the square. This rehearsed that 'ye beauty of this great Towne and ye convenience of your Court are defective in point of houses fitt for ye dwellings of Noble men and other Persons of quality, and that your Majesty hath thought fitt for some Remedy hereof to appoint yt ye Place in St. James Field should be built in great and good houses'. At that time the intention was that the square should consist of houses of the greatest size. It had evidently been found that it would not be possible to dispose of sites for such large mansions under sub-leases and that they would only be taken if the occupier could enjoy the freehold. St. Albans therefore represented that 'unlesse your Majestie be pleased to grant ye inheritance of ye Ground whereon some 13 or 14 houses yt will compose ye said Place are to stand, it will be very hard to attaine ye end proposed for yt men will not build Pallaces upon any terme but yt of Inheritance'. St. Albans thus early declared his intention to sell outright and not merely lease his property surrounding the square.

The original layout of the square intended in 1665 was symmetrical, with broad streets, sixty feet wide, entering the square in the centre of each of its four sides (fig. 3). As actually built the eastward and westward streets, Charles (now Charles II) Street and King Street, were reduced slightly in width, to about 54 feet and 51 feet respectively, while the northward street, York (now Duke of York) Street, was reduced more substantially, to about 40 feet. The short central street on the south side was replaced by two narrower streets communicating with Pall Mall. This side of the square was built irregularly as the back of the row of houses fronting southward on to Pall Mall.

The elimination of the central southern street increased the seclusion of the square and, together with the narrowing of York Street, broke the line of communication between Pall Mall and Jermyn Street provided in the original plan. There are some slight indications that there may have been an early intention to carry this line even further north, to Piccadilly, across the site later chosen for St. James's Church. C. L. Kingsford has drawn attention to a map dated between 1673 and 1680 which seems to show York Street carried north to Piccadilly, and to Ogilby's reference, in 1675, to access from Piccadilly apparently direct to the square.

It was thus during the 1670's that the square took its shape. The style in which it was built conformed to that of St. Albans's own house of 1667. It is not clear, however, whether this uniformity, if it derived from the controlling influence of the Crown officers, is to be attributed more essentially to those holding office in about 1665 or to those in office in the next decade.

The change in the layout already noticed was probably decided on early in the period of renewed building. It seems to have been during 1670 that the depth of the plots granted between the square and Duke Street was increased from 200 to a nominal 210 feet.

For all its simplicity, however, St. Albans's 'piazza' had the distinction of being visually a more effective 'square' than the existing examples in Covent Garden, Lincoln's Inn Fields and Bloomsbury, or the majority of the many squares subsequently created: the entry of the streets left three of the four corners to form unbroken angles creating in some measure a sensation of deliberate enclosure. Indeed, with its more or less regular succession of plain door- and window-openings and a central space uncomplicated by any aspiring statue the square must at first have had the air rather of a very large quasi-collegiate quadrangle rather than an assemblage of the capital's most fashionable residences.

This simplicity may well have been chosen by deliberate taste. It is not known how far it was determined also by the need to reduce the cost of the project. If the uniform employment of this simple style had not already been settled on when development recommenced in 1670 it may then have been adopted as affording better opportunity to vary the width of frontage (hence facilitating the sale of sites) than a more elaborate or centralized overall treatment.

With the building of the northern side in 1675-6 the square was finished: the northern part of York Street and the part of Jermyn Street north of the square were also built at about this time, and the layout completed by the building of St. James's Church in 1676-84 on a well-chosen site between Piccadilly and Jermyn Street. At first the church was separated from Piccadilly by a row of buildings and the main access was from Jermyn Street where the church was commonly said to be situated. The principal, southern, door looked down York Street to the square. The site was leasehold until its conveyance to St. Albans's heir in 1684 to permit its surrender for the church's consecration. But though not part of the significant St. Albans freehold, the church was visually and historically connected with St. Albans's project in the square.

The lighting in the square was at first, and probably until 1727, confined to the lamps at the doors of the houses. In about 1688 these lamps were apparently lit by a company calling itself the 'Copartnership of the New Invention of Lights', (ref. 56) which about the same time lit Jermyn Street and St. James's churchyard (see page 51).

Drainage was provided by a sewer which St. Albans had laid before the houses. His earliest grant and form of grant in 1665 included covenants whereby the grantees were to pay a proportionable part of the cost of its construction and also of any sewers to be made from Mason's Yard and Babmays Mews. By 1670 'the Earl of St. Albans sewer' was the responsibility of the Westminster Commissioners of Sewers.

The bare central space shown by Sutton Nicholls, surfaced with gravel and surrounded by posts and rail, remained unelaborated until 1727, although in 1703 there were 'trees' in the square, probably planted by individual residents before their houses. (ref. 61) This simplicity was doubtless at first effective, setting off the regularity of the surrounding buildings, but with time the central space became disfigured with booths and rubbish. That the accretion of debris was very considerable is suggested by the removal of 3792 cubic yards of soil from the surface of the square when it was replanned in 1727.

Dissatisfaction with the conditions of the open central space had by then led the residents to petition Parliament in February 1725/6, for leave to present a Bill for the better maintenance of the square. The Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 7 March. On 28 March it was sent up to the House of Lords, where, after an unimportant amendment, it received the royal assent on 26 April. It was the first Act of its kind for the maintenance of a London square.

By February 1726/7 the layout had been determined. It was the work of the landscape gardener, Charles Bridgeman. In March 1726/7 the agreement was concluded with him, for work at an estimated expense of some £5630, less the value of the old pavement, which was calculated at £510. The main work was finished in 1728. It is shown in the altered version of Sutton Nicholls's view, which was not, however, revised to show any of the changes that had been made since c. 1722 in the houses surrounding the square.

The basin of water was a circle of 150 feet diameter, surrounded by a gravel walk within an iron railing of octagonal form, at the angles of which stood eight stone obelisks surmounted by lamps. Outside the railing the square was paved in Purbeck stone with 'Square Cubick Stones, commonly called French Paving'. The neatness of the paving, possibly laid by the paviour, Mist, was regarded by eighteenth-century critics as a great beauty of the square.

The water company had been requested to provide 'a Constant Flux of Water coming into the said Bason' which at that time was probably less stagnant than Dasent suggests. In its centre a fountain played daily.

The form of the fountain, a single jet in a low square plinth, was perhaps chosen with regard to another project for the adornment of the square, which had a peculiarly protracted history. This was the erection of a royal statue.

A few years later the bequest was made by which the statue of William III was finally erected. This was in the will made in 1724 by Samuel Travers of St. James's, Westminster, member of Parliament, Auditor General to the Prince of Wales and (probably) Surveyor General of Crown Lands, who like Lord Ranelagh envisaged an equestrian statue in brass. His will included a legacy to erect 'in St. James's Square or on Cheapside Conduit an equestrian statue in brass to the glorious memory of my master William the Third'.

The statue bears on its pedestal the date 1807 and the name of Bacon's son, John Bacon, junior. On the authorship the European Magazine commented : 'As this statue has been supposed by some persons to be one of the works left unfinished by the late Mr. Bacon, it is proper to add, that it has been executed entirely since the death of that artist, by a separate contract entered into with the present Mr. Bacon, on whose premises, in Newman Street, the whole was cast.'

The statue still occupies its original position in the centre of the square, facing north up Duke of York Street. The statue is placed so that the horse and rider face north, on a high stone pedestal raised on an oblong sub-plinth. The pedestal itself is bowed at each end and has a moulded base, a high die, a plain frieze-band, and a moulded cornice surmounted by a blocking-course. Each side face of the die has a sunk panel with bronze lettering GVLIELMUS III placed high in the panel, and the east panel alone bears near the base an incised inscription I. BACON, IVNR. SCVLPTR. 1807.

The erection of the statue was the greatest change in the centre of the square since the improvements of 1727.

In 1799 the octangular railing was replaced by one of circular form. (ref. 105) The oil lamps were replaced by gas in 1817, when the Gas Light Company agreed to light twelve lamps 'round the ring'. They also laid a main before the houses, leaving the residents to contract individually for the use of gas if they chose, which 'a great majority' had signified their intention of doing. By 1819 the expense of lighting 'the private Lamps, hitherto paid by the Owners of Houses' was defrayed from 'the General Fund'. On introducing gaslighting into the square the Trustees offered to light with gas also the lamps at the street-corners, which had presumably been lit by the parish, provided the parish would contribute what it had cost it to light them with oil.

For the first century or so of its history the square is not known to have been associated very closely with the most fashionable names in English architecture. But thereafter two of the architects most widely employed by the aristocracy, Adam and Soane, worked quite extensively in the square, although the frustration or reconstruction of their designs has prevented this being apparent. In the 1770's Adam built or refaced the exteriors of Nos. 11, 20 and 33 and produced an unexecuted design for No. 14: he also worked on the south side of the square. No. 20 remains, as the nucleus of a modern building, but at Nos. 11 and 33 his preservation of the earlier carcase, and later alterations, have made his work difficult to recognize. Between 1795 and 1823 Soane, besides being employed to make surveys of Nos. 8, 15 and 18, altered the façade of No. 21, built the Charles Street extension of No. 33 and carried out internal extensions and reconstructions at these two houses and at No. 3. He also made unexecuted plans for Samuel Thornton's house and supervised its repair. All this has disappeared except the Charles Street front of No. 33, which has been altered. The later phase of Soane's work at Nos. 3 and 33, after the ending of the French war, was coincident with a good deal of important building activity in the square: John Field rebuilt No. 6 and the Cockerells No. 32, while some work by Robert Abraham was introduced into Norfolk House.

The transformation of the square to its present visual character was effected chiefly between 1933 and 1939, with the rebuilding in a radically new manner of Nos. 3, 8 and Norfolk House, and the aggrandizement of the façade of No. 20 over two sites. A similar radical rebuilding has since been carried through on the site of Nos. 1-2, and only the range of building between Duke of York Street and the north-west corner of the square retains as yet the scale of large but private residences.

The redevelopment in the 1930's was marked by a notable increase in the height of building, coupled with a reduced and uniform floor-to-floor height occasioned by the use of sites to provide office accommodation. This increase in height and reduction in architectural scale, appearing on the south side also in the accretions to the roof of the Junior Carlton club-house, has brought about a visual transformation which the retention of some of the stylistic elements of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century architecture has not counteracted.

Today perhaps a dozen houses still preserve in their aspect something of the square's ancient character. But with the rebuilding of Nos. 3, 8, 21 and Norfolk House before the war, and of Nos. 1-2 and 6 subsequently, none of the sides of the square has retained its wholly residential appearance. Under the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 the powers of the Council, as planning authority, to control development have been increased. The sheer height of façades to the square is likely in future to be limited approximately to that of the older houses: this height has been respected in the rebuilding of No. 6. Building Preservation Orders have been placed on Nos. 5, 9-12, 18, 32 and 33, those on Nos. 5 and 9-10 having been confirmed by the Minister of Housing and Local Government.