Conceived as an ambitious attempt to rival the large, high-class Kemp Town estate east of Brighton, the crescent was not built to its original plan because time and money were insufficient.

The adjacent land was originally occupied by "the world's largest conservatory", the Anthaeum; its collapse stopped construction of the crescent, which did not resume until the 1850s.

Adelaide Crescent is immediately behind Hove seafront, bounded by Kingsway (the coast road) to the south and Palmeira Square to the north.

This 250-acre (100 ha) estate, based on a farm of the same name, covered open land east of Hove village as far as the parish boundary with Brighton.

[5] Brighton was a small town based on fishing and agriculture until the early 18th century, after which it experienced several phases of rapid growth and developed into a large, fashionable seaside resort.

Its western neighbour, Hove, was still a small village well into the 19th century, though, its development being constrained because the land around it was divided into several estates owned by wealthy local families.

He intended to replicate his Kemp Town development—an architectural set-piece of high-class houses set in crescents, squares and terraces around central gardens, built in the 1820s[6] east of Brighton—but could not afford to do so,[7] although the plans were announced in the Sussex Advertiser newspaper in 1825[2] and in other media.

[2] Building work started in December 1830, and Goldsmid sought William IV's permission to name the development after the queen consort Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

[18][19] Construction work took place in 1832–33, but the builders removed a supporting pillar crucial to the design and took away temporary scaffolding holding up the glazed dome.

[23] By this time, the partly built crescent stood at the extreme west end of a nearly unbroken line of buildings along the seafront all the way to Kemp Town, about 3 miles (4.8 km) to the east.

[28] Between 1852 and 1854, St John the Baptist's Church was built to serve Adelaide Crescent, Brunswick Town and the surrounding area, which Goldsmid intended to develop intensively with housing.

[16] Details taken during the United Kingdom Census 1861 show that the crescent was a prestigious address popular with wealthy people, most of whom had several servants.

After the starkly Modernist Embassy Court was built next to Brunswick Terrace in 1934–35, Alderman Sir Herbert Carden put forward a proposal to demolish all of the 19th-century buildings along the seafront and replace them with modern blocks of flats.

[4][36] The idea was put forward again in 1945 after his death,[33][37] which led directly to the founding of the influential conservation group the Brighton and Hove Regency Society.

[33] The Council approved the plan in July 1965 and confirmed this after another meeting in November, but by this time the public was well aware of the scheme and there was much opposition—including from some members of parliament and from Sir John Betjeman.

[35] Writing in 1950, local architectural historian Antony Dale noted that plans dated October 1825 and signed by Charles Barry, showing a large three-sided square immediately west of Adelaide Crescent and opening straight out to sea, "[had] just come to light".

[39] Nevertheless, the overall impression is of the transition from Georgian motifs into the newly fashionable Italianate style,[40] with overtones of "Neo-Renaissance, if not Neo-Neo-Palladian)"[41] in Burton's partly executed original scheme.

[42] "The finest part"[43] of the east range of Adelaide Crescent is the south-facing terminating feature at the southeast corner (numbers 1–3), which is not matched by one on the west side.

[43][44] "Monumental" in scale, the style of these buildings is different from those at Kemp Town, built a few years earlier: the Brighton area's architecture was moving "away from Regency towards the Neo-Renaissance".

By the top of the crescent at house number 19, Palmeira Square is reached and the two developments merge seamlessly,[43][44] "show[ing] the transition into the Italianate as clearly as contemporary work ... [around] Hyde Park".

Casement windows lead to the first-floor balconies, which have decorative cast iron railings and which continue around the curve rather than being individual as at numbers 1–3.

There is no terminating south-facing feature: Burton's plan to have the crescent's ends "treated in each case as a pedimented centralised composition of three houses facing the sea" was only adopted on the east side.

These ramps have large balustrades and piers, thick brick and rubble walls coated with stucco, and ornate decoration in the form of rustication and mouldings.

There are 14 piers set at intervals; each has ashlar panelling and vermiculated rustication, and upper sections with pediments which have palmette motifs in their tympana.

[47] In July 2013, local society The Friends of Palmeira & Adelaide noted that the wall is in "poor condition and deteriorating with every year that passes", and that neither the council nor English Heritage would be able to fund repairs.

[46] Ten cast iron lamp-posts,[62] the retaining wall at the south end of the gardens[47] and the nearby building called Adelaide Mansions[63] were all listed at the lower Grade II on 2 November 1992.

[65] Brighton & Hove City Council's report on the area's character states that the crescent contributes to "one of the finest examples of Regency and early Victorian planning and architecture in the country".