Street's mother had remarried in 1569 and in 1581 his stepfather William Marrytt, a prosperous brewer, made a gift of a house and shop to his stepson.
[4]) Although no documentary record specifying Street's involvement with the Blackfriars project has been found, it is assumed that he acquired the woodyard so that he could be close to the site of his new contract.
[4] A waterfront yard was necessary as Street stayed in Berkshire, near to where his timber was grown, to prefabricate the components for his timber-framed buildings in London, and then transported the pieces by barge down the Thames to where they were needed.
When the Blackfriars scheme was put aside, because of insurmountable opposition from some influential neighbours, it was Street to whom James's sons, Cuthbert the business manager and actor Richard, turned for a new solution.
The matter was pressing, because the Burbages were about to lose their existing playhouse, The Theatre, when their lease expired, an event that would probably mean the dissolution of their successful company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
[7] The eight sharers in the Chamberlain's Men, after securing a long lease on land in Southwark, on the other side of the Thames, arranged for Street to remove the oak timbers of The Theatre for re-use in their new premises; they were forced to reduce the costs of the venture as far as they could, following their thwarted expenditure at Blackfriars.
[8] There they were stored until the pile and masonry foundations at Southwark, prepared under Street's direction by one William Shepherd to "force the building out of the marsh", as Ben Jonson put it, were complete.
[9] As well as storing the reclaimed material from The Theatre, Street's preparations would have included prefabricating extra framing for his structure, near to where the timber was grown and seasoned, upriver in Berkshire—The Globe was going to be larger than the building it replaced.
At one of the court cases to settle the 1596 Bridewell leasehold dispute, Street described himself as a member of the Queen's household, but the other party accused him of making this claim only to overawe his opponents and so divert attention from his "dishonest practices".
Apart from offering the benefit of his experience in theatre design, Street's particular contribution was the wooden columns, hollowed out to prevent splitting and painted to resemble marble, in the style of those at The Globe.
[16] Mary Edmond speculates that Street's experience in theatre construction was also put to use in building the stage and seating for the royal masques at James's court.