King William Street is a street in the City of London, the historic nucleus and modern financial centre of London. It is a two-way street linking Lombard Street, at its northern end, with London Bridge, which marks the start of the start of the A3 route to Portsmouth.
The road was built between 1829 and 1835 and is named after the reigning monarch of the time, King William IV.[2] From 1844 to 1936 a Statue of William IV sat on a column in the street before being relocated to King William Walk in Greenwich. In 1902 King William Street was the scene of the fatal stabbing of Arthur Reginald Baker by his lover Kitty Byron, at an entrance to the Lombard Street post office which at that time was located on King William Street. Today, it houses a number of investment banks and City firms.
Notable buildings
No. 1, was originally constructed as the head office of the London Assurance Corporation on the site of the first clubhouse of the Gresham Club. It has housed the Rothschild headquarters.[3]
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.