Adelgade originates in the 1649 plan for New Copenhagen, the large area which was included in the fortified city when the old East Rampart along present day Gothersgade was decommissioned and a new one was built in a more northerly direction.

The most affluent families settled along Bredgade and Ny Kongensgade while the area around Adelgade and Borgergade catered to a more modest clientele, typically craftsmen and shop-keepers.

On 26 January 1865, the first public bath house opened in the street after a donation from Carl Joachim Hambro, a banker residing in London,[2] but apart from that sanitation facilities were sparse.

[3] When the Fortifications were decommissioned in the middle of the century, many of the owners moved on to the new residential districts which had sprung up, such as Nørrebro and Vesterbro, and the area around Borgergade developed into one of the worst and most crowded slums in the city with a notorious reputation for poverty, vice and crime.

[5] The most striking modern development along the street is Dronningegården which forms an urban space around the intersection of Adelgade with Dronningens Tværgade.

50–64) is from 1960 and was designed by Thorvald Dreyer an Svend Eske Kristensen.d The last section of Adelgade passes four rows of Nyboder houses, two on each side of the street, oriented along Fredericiagade and Olfert Fischer Gade respectively.