The first leases on the new buildings in the street were taken out in 1815,[4] by which time it was thought appropriate to name it after the British victory at the Battle of Waterloo which had taken place in June of that year, perhaps as a military counterpart to Trafalgar Square.

[4] Following a fire in 1824, Carlton House was demolished and part of the vacant plot on the western corner of Pall Mall and Waterloo Place was offered by Parliament to the Athenaeum Club who were in temporary premises nearby.

On the western edge, Matthew Noble's statue of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin was unveiled in 1866, followed the next year by Carlo Marochetti's memorial to Crimean War hero, Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde on the eastern side.

It was joined in the following year by a new statue of Florence Nightingale by Arthur George Walker, making a group of three Crimean memorials in the centre of the roadway.

[8] The last addition was a memorial by Leslie Johnson to Sir Keith Park, known as "the defender of London" during the Battle of Britain, which was installed in 2010 next to Scott and Franklin.