In the 1750s these were demolished and Great George Street laid out with "houses only as are fit for the habitation of persons of fortune and distinction".

Much of the land that now forms Great George Street was once owned by Sir Hugh Vaughan, who had close ties to Henry VII of England.

Other parts of the current street, near George Yard, were owned by Thomas Pope and included a house occupied by Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Baronet.

The development fell to a private speculator, James Mellors, the builder of houses on Parliament Street (Whitehall).

Mellors was granted an act of parliament which stated "highly advantageous and convenient to the publick in general, as well as a great ornament to the antient City of Westminster, more especially if such houses only as are fit for the habitation of persons of fortune and distinction, were erected and built on each side of the said street".

[2] The Institution of Civil Engineers was housed at number 25 from 1839 and had extended the property in an 1868 rebuild designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt.

[6] The only surviving façade from Mellors' original structures is number 11 (built 1756 for George Amyand) which is now part of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors headquarters.

[7] The remainder of the headquarters, number 12, is a 1896-1898 Alfred Waterhouse design,[2] and where the British Union of Fascists was launched on 1 October 1932.