Baker Street is a street in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster in London. It is made famous for its connection to the fictitious detective Sherlock Holmes, who lived at 221B Baker Street, an address that does not exist.
Baker Street starts from the Outer Circle of Regent's Park, intersecting with Park Road, Marylebone Road, York Street, among others, and ends at the intersection with Wigmore Street, where it turns into Orchard Street.
At the time Conan Doyle wrote his fiction, the street numbers in Baker Street went up to 100 only, which is why he chose 221B. If it has existed at all, it would be at Upper Baker Street during Conan Doyle's lifetime. Indeed, in the first manuscript, Conan Doyle put Holmes's home as in "Upper Baker Street", indicating that the house in mind would be in the section north of Marylebone Road, near Regent's Park. When the streets were renumbered in the 1930's, the odd numbers from 219-229 were given to an Art Deco building known as Abbey House. It was constructed in 1932 by the Abbey Road Building Society and subsequently became Abbey National Bank, and now Abbey National plc, United Kingdom's 6th biggest bank and Europe's 2nd largest mortgage lender.
Almost immediately Abbey National Bank began receiving correspondence from fans of Sherlock Holmes. There was so many, that the bank had to employ a person, titled "Secretary to Sherlock Holmes" to deal with it.
The Sherlock Holmes Museum, a non-profit organisation run by enthusiasts of Sherlock Holmes, is housed in a 1815 house similar to the fictitious 221B. Its actual address is 239 Baker Street. It opened in 1990, and sought unsuccessfully to get the mails for Sherlock Holmes to be sent to it rather than to Abbey National Bank, on the ground that the bank has no business receiving Sherlock Holmes mails. The matter went to court, but the bank won. Although unsuccessful, in 2002 the Sherlock Holmes finally got the mails delivered to them, when Abbey National moved their headquarters. Now both have something to claim: Abbey House is where "221B" could have been, and the museum is where "Sherlock Holmes's post is delivered."
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