How London Was Rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666

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The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed central London. Several intrepid designers saw the rebuilding process as an opportunity to fix the old city’s problems. None of these plans were ever adopted. Why?

Resources on this topic:
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10099694/3/Hebbert_The long after-life of Christopher Wren’s short-lived London plan of 1666_AAM.pdf

The Making of Urban America, John Reps. (https://www.amazon.com/Making-America-History-Planning-United/dp/0691006180)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/abs/quantitative-reasoning-and-commercial-logic-in-rebuilding-plans-after-the-great-fire-of-london-1666/405A86E7219756014D3F9F836DF5CCB3

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Written by Dave Amos.
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Just after midnight on Sunday September 2nd 1666 a fire broke out in Thomas farer Bakery on pudding Street in London despite the neighbors rushing to douse the Flames it quickly spread to adjoining buildings within 24 hours it had spread to a substantial portion of cramped combustible Central London high

Winds fann the Flames by Monday evening had nearly spread to St Paul’s Cathedral Tuesday was even worse and St Paul’s didn’t make it it might have fared better as it was a large Stone building but Renovations led by AR arit Christopher Ren were underway and it was covered in wooden scaffolding by

Wednesday the wind had died down and the fire breakes began to hold the Flames were extinguished on Thursday the fire was over but this is where our Story begins luckily few people lost their lives but it was still an absolute catastrophe over 15% of homes in London were destroyed displacing an estimated

100,000 people that’s 25% of the entire population of London at that time London’s economic engine ground to a halt but it was clear that London needed to rebuild but how some blamed London’s narrow Warren of medieval streets for the rapid spread of the fire would it

Really be a good idea to build London exactly as it once was well some of England’s most notable Architects and designers thought the answer was no Christopher Ren presented a plan for redesign Central London to the King 3 days after the fire went out that’s so

Fast that you think that he drafted the plan and then set fire to London to make his plan relevant 3 Days Later John Evelyn submitted his draft and again urged the king to take the opportunity to completely reimagine London Robert Hook submitted his design shortly after

That and so too did Richard newort King Charles II must have gotten annoyed by all these freelance Architects submitting proposals because he was pretty harsh and the last guy to submit one apparently the king did not like Valentine night scheme yes that was his real name because he had him sent to the

Tower of London for it apparently the king didn’t like his proposal for a new Canal to be dug around the entirety of Central London with toll bridges to fund reconstru construction I say he was just ahead of his time with congestion pricing despite all of these plans the

King decided not to implement any of them but instead rebuild London according to much the same street layout that had existed before the fire the big question is why were the designs no good or was it too much of a hassle when everybody just needed to go back to

Their homes you know we think about Paris as having these Grand amazing diagonal boulevards but what if London had beat them to it let’s talk about it after the bike Bell the obvious play after the fire was simply to rebuild London as it once was

I mean why not right it wasn’t like the plan seemed to be holding London back at all it was still the preeminent city in England and maybe all of Europe but to the designers of those proposals those old plans were from the Dark Ages they were absolutely holding London back and

Their new proposals were better and modern let’s take a look at some of the proposals to understand what they mean let’s start with Ren’s design there are a few important landmarks on this map and you can tell which he thought were the most important because you put them

In the middle of a square the most important might be the Royal exchange up here it’s the focal point of a square and surrounded by a post office xiz office Bank insurance office and two goldsmiths he basically took all of the land uses important to local businesses

And put them in one convenient location another important commercial building the customs house is also in the middle of a square on the riverfront St Paul’s Cathedral the most important Church in London get centered in a square on the top of Ludgate Hill the highest point in

The area all the streets in Ren Planet are significantly wider than the old streets and they’re straight making it easier to go between major destinations four straight boulevards radiate out from London Bridge for example Evelyn’s plan looks similar to Rens on the surface and is doing a lot of the same

Things long straight wide streets everywhere streets radiate from the London Bridge he even put a fish market right there in the Square the Royal exchange is an important building but in this scheme it’s along the riverfront where much of the trade is happening he also put St Paul’s back on Ludgate Hill

New Court’s plan is a little more diagrammatic than the previous two plans but the streets are also straighter and wider fun fact new Court’s plan with the park pattern ended up inspiring the design of Philadelphia all of these plans represent a move towards Enlightenment thinking rationality reason logic and order were highly

Valued the Dark Ages plan of old London is something to be removed and replaced with something more modern this way of thinking helped our Intrepid designers make a more concrete case for why their plans should be adap adopted they believe that the time and money costs associated with redesigning the city

Will be more than made up for with the efficiency benefits associated with Commerce yes even back in 1666 it all came down to the almighty dollar or pound in the Medieval Era people were obviously aware of the relationship between location and land value some pieces of land were in better locations

And worth more but by the mid 1600s London real estate speculation began to resemble modern-day conditions with investors looking to purchase land and rent or sell for profit these speculators even self-impose building standards to ensure that they would attract high value renters Ren and Evelyn believed that their plans were to

Raise land values by creating efficient orderly districts that were different than the disorder found in the old Central London and certainly better than the disorder found in London’s swelling suburbs filled with migrants living in substandard conditions but if it wasn’t immediately obvious already especially if you live in London or ever visited

There none of these proposals actually got built instead parliament passed the rebuilding of London Act which aimed to create a more flexible framework for the Reconstruction the streets would stay where they were but they would be widen to better accommodate traffic and commerce land owners will be paid for

The land taken to widen the streets the law also specified new building codes for things like stone and brick construction and party walls they hop these measures would prevent a fire the size of the great fire from happening again the point of this Act was to rebuild as quickly as possible while

Making some improvements to the overall function of Central London it was billback better 1666 sty St to top it all off the ACT funded the construction of a monument near where the fire started and the King and Parliament had another not insignificant reason for choosing a more straightforward path in

The immediate aftermath people were beginning to look for someone to blame for the fire and many began to blame the French the Dutch and the Catholics refugees and political leaders feared that an invasion by these foreign powers was imminent given London severely weakened state the city needed to

Rebuild as quickly as possible to bring itself back up to full strength and protect itself but this rush to rebuild based in part on unfounded paranoia actually galvanized some of the supporters of the redesigned schemes most notably Christopher Ren Ren was the most famous of the group and eventually

Redesigned 51 Parish churches that burned in the fire including St Paul’s with his genius on display in his architecture many felt like his plan would have been a genius move too so here’s the big question would adopting a plan like Rens or Evin really have made London more modern wealthy and

Enlightened undoubtedly London would have set it itself apart from other cities in Europe at the time broad diagonal boulevards with the opportunity to reorganize the city’s land uses would have been a luxury other cities at the time just didn’t have houseman’s renovation of Paris was still nearly 200

Years away at this point I think the answer honestly depends on how much of a city’s success you can attribute to the design of its Street Network I mean it matters somewhat but would London have been that much better if it had adopted Ren’s plan as compared to the rebuilding

London act improvements I mean probably not that much London was basically built and back to full capacity within 5 years and the paperwork that would have been required to get everyone’s property reassigned would have likely added years onto that number in the meantime England would have had to figure out how to

Handle a long-term Refugee crisis many simply wouldn’t have returned New Orleans lost nearly 30% of its population after Hurricane Katrina for example sometimes people just don’t move back particularly if the response is slow The Great Fire of 1666 and Ren’s plan is also a classic example of how Street streets are essentially permanent

The effort required to redesign a street Network and reassign private property is so great that it almost never happens many European cities are still using Street grids drawn up by the Romans 2,000 years ago disasters like a great fire aren’t even enough it’s like those property lines are drawn in permanent

Ink on the surface of the Earth itself only autocrats like Napoleon III and baron housan can force new streets through the existing landscape like they did in Paris if you’re interested in the story of how Paris managed to get its boulevards thanks to Napoleon the third’s rule and houseman’s designs and

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