London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time.
Here’s an odd thought.
For nearly two hundred years, if you wanted to find the beating heart of America…
You didn’t go to Washington.
You came to Mayfair.
You came to Grosvenor Square.
Yes.
That elegant Georgian square, five minutes from Bond Street.
That patch of green surrounded by handsome eighteenth-century houses.
That was America’s London address.
And, in many ways, America’s front door.
The story begins almost as soon as the United States itself does.
In 1785, the newly independent republic sent its first minister to Britain.
His name was John Adams.
A future President of the United States.
He made his home on Grosvenor Square.
Just pause over that thought.
The first American representative to the Court of St James’s lived in a house that still stands today.
History has a pleasing habit of feeling surprisingly close in London.
Adams admired London enormously.
He also found it exhausting.
The etiquette.
The ceremony.
The rigid social hierarchy.
He was representing a brand-new republic in the capital of an ancient monarchy.
The American Revolution was over.
The memories certainly weren’t.
And Grosvenor Square became the stage on which that complicated new relationship slowly found its feet.
Fast forward a century and a half.
History comes knocking again.
The Second World War.
Thousands upon thousands of American servicemen arrive in Britain.
American accents fill the streets around Mayfair.
Jeeps rumble through Grosvenor Square.
Military police patrol the pavements.
Londoners quickly dub the neighbourhood “Little America.”
Some of them go one better.
They christen it “Eisenhowerplatz.”
You can almost hear the affection in the name.
Because this is where General Dwight D. Eisenhower establishes Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
SHAEF.
From offices overlooking Grosvenor Square, plans are laid for the greatest amphibious invasion in history.
D-Day.
It’s no exaggeration to say that decisions taken here helped determine the future of Europe.
Today a bronze statue of Eisenhower stands in the square.
Hands in his pockets.
Looking almost modest.
It’s easy to stroll past him.
Don’t.
He helped change the world.
After the war, America’s presence became even more visible.
The United States Embassy rose on the west side of the square.
A striking modern building crowned by a great gilded eagle.
That eagle was no accident.
Though it could have been something altogether different.
Benjamin Franklin wasn’t at all taken with the bald eagle. In a private letter to his daughter he dismissed it as “a bird of bad moral character” and declared the turkey “a much more respectable bird.”
So, had Ben’s preference carried the day, Grosvenor Square might have been crowned not by that magnificent gilded eagle…
But by an enormous gilded turkey.
Imagine it.
A gobbler with a thirty-five-foot wingspan keeping watch over Mayfair.
I guarantee you London would have taken it to its heart.
“Turn left at the giant turkey.”
“Can’t miss it.”
For generations of Londoners, that eagle became one of the capital’s best-known landmarks.
Need a visa?
You came to Grosvenor Square.
Joining the queue outside the embassy became almost a rite of passage.
After 9/11, the security barriers appeared.
The embassy gradually became a fortress.
Eventually the Americans decided they had outgrown the site.
Today their embassy stands at Nine Elms, south of the Thames.
Safer.
Larger.
Purpose-built.
But somehow…
Not quite Grosvenor Square.
Here’s my favourite story.
Like all the best London stories, it may not be entirely true.
The Americans are said to have approached the Grosvenor Estate,
hoping to buy the embassy site outright.
The Duke’s reply?
“With pleasure.
Just as soon as you return the Grosvenor family’s estates in Virginia and Maryland that were illegally seized in 1776.”
Did he actually say it?
Who knows?
It’s one of those stories that’s almost too good not to be true.
A long lease was agreed instead.
Today the old embassy has a new life.
The diplomats have gone.
The eagle remains.
And Grosvenor Square itself?
Something remarkable has happened.
For years, if I’m honest, I never quite warmed to it.
It always struck me as rather…
Flat.
Austere.
A huge open rectangle that you crossed rather than enjoyed.
Not any more.
The redesign has transformed it.
Curving paths.
Rich planting.
Beautiful lawns.
More trees.
More shade.
More places simply to sit.
The square has softened.
It has become somewhere that invites you to linger.
And that feels exactly right.
Because this isn’t merely another London square.
It’s one of the places where the modern relationship between Britain and the United States was lived.
Not just by presidents and prime ministers.
But by diplomats.
Servicemen.
Messengers.
Secretaries.
Drivers.
Londoners.
Americans.
Thousands upon thousands of ordinary people whose lives crossed here.
And that’s the joy of Grosvenor Square.
To most passers-by…
It’s a pleasant Mayfair garden.
To somebody who knows its stories…
It’s one of the most American places in Britain.
And if you’d like to discover why…
Come with us on our Mayfair walk.
We’ll show you Grosvenor Square.
But more importantly…
We’ll help you see it.
Because that’s what London Walks does.
We don’t simply take you to places.
We change the way you see them.
That’s London.
That’s London Walks.
See you tomorrow.