The street is built in the form of an L. Two streets called William Street and James Street formerly covered the two sides of the L shape before it was renamed. These two streetnames were already being used for others in the area.
The Bishops of Durham had held land here from about 1220. Their inn, or mansion, first built around this time for Richard le Poor, faced onto the Strand behind a grand gatehouse, with its chapel and banqueting hall reaching down to the banks of the Thames.
When Thomas Cromwell drew up the schedule for religious house closures, Durham House was high on the list, and only three years after Henry VIII declared a severance with the church of Rome it fell into the hands of the Crown. Henry, who at this time was beginning to acquire too much property to cope with, made a gift of the house to the Earl of Wiltshire, and when he had finished with it, it became the home of Princess Elizabeth. Within the walls of Durham House Lady Jane Grey gave up her freedom and her life when she pronounced those terminal words, ‘I do’; here she stayed until that fateful day when she was taken by barge on her final journey along the Thames to the Tower.
Originally this was two separate streets. The part directly off John Adam Street was James Street and the continuation round the bend was William Street.
When profoundly Roman Catholic Queen Mary succeeded to the throne she returned the House to the Bishop of Durham, but Elizabeth I was not at all pleased with the Bishop so she terminated his position and seized the house. Sir Walter Raleigh was next on the scene and while he remained in the Queen’s good books, carried on his affairs at the house, but when he lost favour he also lost his house, and a little while after, his head followed suit. For a short period the Bishop of Durham returned but could not hit it off with his neighbour, Lord Salisbury, and so quit for all time. As time elapsed the fabric deteriorated, the house fell into disrepair and was demolished. The land was leased out to various building speculators who each erected their individual groups of small houses and sold them off to traders and small-time business men. By 1750 the area had become a place of squalor and the houses were so in need of repair that many of them were on the verge of falling down.
In 1768 the site aroused the interest of the Adam brothers, John, Robert, James and William, for inclusion in their major building project and they obtained a lease on the land from the Bishop of Durham. Building commenced in 1772 and the complex of streets as we see them today were all laid out to their plan. It was the first riverside housing complex to be built in London; an estate of charming properties built to a regular plan developed by the brothers. To the south, along the riverside, they constructed a series of ground-level arches on which was built the Royal Terrace, a line of four storey houses facing the Thames. Unfortunately the elaborate houses they built didn’t sell and the project ended up in financial disaster. Finally the properties were disposed of by selling lottery tickets.
The Victorians held little regard for the Adam’s creations, adding cumbersome balconies, other out-of-place adornments, and covering the frontages with a stucco finish.
In 1936, almost the entire line of the Royal Terrace was pulled down. All traces of the past buildings have gone except for the Royal Society of Arts building at number eight John Adam Street, erected in 1774. Opposite the rear side of the RSA a flight of steps ascends onto the Strand.