ancient cities

34 Arcade
promoted order and control. From the outset,
entry to the arcade was moderated; members of
Lord Cavendish’s ex-military regiment were
employed as beadles to guard entry to the arcade
and to enforce certain regulations. These governed
opening and closing times (the arcade closed at
8 p.m. and was locked at night); the kind of movement
that could take place in the arcade (this
excluded running, pushing a pram, and carrying
bulky packages or open umbrellas); and the noise
level in the arcade (there was to be no whistling,
singing, or playing of musical instruments). In contrast
to the surrounding unruly city, associated
with danger and threat, emphasis was placed on
order and control. The status of the arcade was
clearly indicated to passersby at the point of entry,
the threshold with the street, where the presence of
the beadles and the colonnaded screens indicated a
transition from the unruly and public to the
ordered and private.
The district immediately surrounding the arcade
at the beginning of the nineteenth century was
described as a “morning lounge” for wealthy
young men. The streets in the vicinity housed a
large number of male venues, such as the clubs of
St. James’s Street and Pall Mall, and provided
lodgings for single men of the nobility, gentry, and
professional classes. As such, the location provided
a concentration of wealthy male customers, and
the district played an important part in the commerce
of female prostitution. A number of highclass
brothels were located in King’s Place nearby,
and at night the streets of St. James’s, Pall Mall,
Piccadilly, and the Haymarket formed a circuit
notorious for streetwalkers.
As a consequence of this position, the Burlington
Arcade was specifically mentioned in contemporary
men’s magazines as a pleasure resort and a place
to pick up pretty women. It was at the threshold
between street and arcade, where decisions were
enacted by the beadles concerning who could and
who could not enter the arcade. Men and women
could be excluded on grounds of class, but prostitutes
presented a particular threat, for they might
“dress up” as respectable women and pass by the
beadles or alternatively bribe them. The presence of
prostitutes and possible confusion of them with
respectable women meant that at certain times of
day, specifically between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., respectable
women would not enter the Burlington Arcade.
The Burlington Arcade was described by various
primary sources as an “agreeable promenade,”
“walk or piazza,” “long and commodious archway,”
and “covered passage.” As symmetrical
streets and sky-lit spaces, arcades gave access to the
interior of blocks, provided semipublic routes
through private property, and allowed ways of
organizing retail trade. The spatial layout of the
arcades exploited possibilities opened up by divorcing
the point of sale from the place of production.
Shops could be smaller, allowing narrow strips of
unusable urban land to be economically developed.
The building of the Burlington Arcade utilized a
narrow strip of land alongside Burlington House
and made it commercially viable. Samuel Ware’s
early designs, based on the Exeter Change, described
two entrances, four double rows of shops, and
three open, intervening spaces. But as built, retail
opportunities were increased by including unbroken
rows of enclosed shops down each side, providing
not only a space of static consumption, but also
a space of transition, a place for a promenade.
The successful selling and buying of goods
requires the right kind of environment, a seductive
and convincing atmosphere, and a consistency
between the type of goods on sale and the design
of the shop. For the Burlington Arcade to succeed
as a space for luxury consumption, the design of
the shops required careful consideration. Shops
selling high-class goods were distinguished by having
workshops either off-site or located in distinct
and separate areas. This separation of production
and consumption allowed the shops in the arcade
to be unusually shallow in their design.
The original purpose of the Burlington Arcade
was to provide employment for women, and in the
early- and mid-nineteenth century many of the
shops of the arcade were occupied and owned by
women. Each shop was designed as a discrete and
self-contained unit, with a ground floor, a basement,
and upper chambers, all accessed via a staircase.
The upper chambers of the shops were
considered sites of prostitution and featured in tales
of early-nineteenth-century London, such as George
Smeeton’s Doings in London. While millinery shops
were represented as fronts for brothels and scenes of
seduction, the upper chambers of bonnet shops in
the Burlington Arcade were described in fiction and
by contemporary commentators such as Bracebridge
Hemyng as the sites of sex and of prostitution.