In 1531 Henry VIII acquired St. James's Hospital and 185½ acres of land from the Provost and College of Eton. A Crown lease of 1552 states that nine acres of the demesne lands of the former hospital had been laid into roads, and it seems likely that the thoroughfare now known as St. James's Street was one of these. There is no doubt that such a road was in existence a few years later, for the northern end of it is marked on a plan of 1585, and St. James's Fair was held in the road for many years.

The ratebooks for the first half of the seventeenth century suggest that there were a few houses beside the road. By 1658 there were fifteen houses on the west side between the future Park Place and Cleveland Row, of which the largest were (Sir) William Pulteney's (on the site of Nos. 75-85) and Sir Henry Henne's, on the corner of Cleveland Row. Some of the ramshackle development which took place in Pall Mall Field in the 1650's was probably along the east side of the road. The name 'St. James's Street' first appears in the ratebook for 1660.

After the formation of the Bailiwick ot St. James in the reign of Henry VIII the freehold of all the ground on both sides of the future street became Crown property and remained so until the reign of Charles II.

On the east side of the street the ground between King Street and Pall Mall formed part of the area granted freehold by Charles II to the Earl of St. Albans's trustees in 1665. At the time of the erection of the St. James's Bazaar (now No. 10 St. James's Street and Nos. 20 and 21 King Street) in 1831-2 a narrow strip of ground now occupied by the south side of this building was re-acquired by the Crown, and in more recent years the Crown has also purchased the freehold of Nos. 7-9 St. James's Street.

In 1662 St. James's Street was included among several streets 'thought fitt immediately to be repaired new paved or otherwise amended', and was placed under the control of paving commissioners appointed by an Act of Parliament.

In the eighteenth century there appears to have been a steep gradient at the north end of the street, where the houses had 'before them a Terrace Walk ascending by Steps, with a Freestone Pavement'. In 1765 the Westminster Paving Commissioners obtained statutory power to remove a terrace and steps on the west side of the street, where there had been frequent accidents to pedestrians and passengers in sedan chairs. Their efforts at improvement do not, however, appear to have been immediately successful, for according to a correspondent of The London Chronicle 'some of the ground-floors, that were almost level with the street, are now eight, nine, and some ten steps, and these very steep, from the ground; while others, to which you used to ascend by three or four steps, are now as many below the surface. Cellars are now above ground, and some gentlemen are forced to dive into their own parlours.

The fame of St. James's Street rests mainly upon its association with the coffee or chocolate houses and clubs which for some two and a half centuries have made it and Pall Mall the social rendezvous of masculine aristocratic society in London. This association dates back to the reign of William III, and more particularly to the fire of January 1697/8 which ravaged the Palace of Whitehall and resulted in the removal of the Court to St. James's. Only two chocolate houses- White's (1693) and Ozinda's (1694)-are known to have been in existence in St. James's Street and Pall Mall before the fire, but the succeeding years saw the establishment of the Cocoa Tree (1698), the Smyrna (1702), the Thatched House Tavern (1704 or 1705) and the St. James's Coffee House (1705), all catering for the new clientè created in the neighbourhood by the presence of the Court of St. James..

St. James's Street thus became a centre of fashionable trade rather than of fashionable residence, and although Strype described it in 1720 as 'a spacious Street, with very good Houses well inhabited by Gentry', another commentator, writing in 1764, stated that it was 'chiefly inhabited by people in trade'. In 1815 Brayley recorded that the west side 'is chiefly composed of stately houses belonging to the nobility and gentry, one or two extensive hotels, bankers, etc. The opposite side consists of elegant shops, which appear to a stranger rather as lounging-places than the resorts of trade and the busy pursuits of merchandize.' With this emphasis on trade it is therefore not surprising to find that, with the exception of the three great club-houses of White's, Brooks's and Boodle's, the eighteenth-century buildings of St. James's Street were, by the standards of the time, undistinguished.