Continuing the tour started in this post, here are a few shots made in Bloomsbury, a fashionable residential area which is home to the British Museum, among other academic and historic sights.
The focal point of the area is the pleasant Russell Square.
The massive building towering over the square is the Hotel Russell, built at the end of 19th century.
Several streets running away from the square are built up with rows of plain-looking brown houses four stories high. Almost every door here is a boutique hotel.
On Museum Street, near the British Museum, sits this fine-looking building. The sign says “Ruskin House”, but it is not the building of such name described in Wikipedia (that one is in Croydon).
Why is it that regardless of what city or country you’re in, the “squares” are never square? In London, they’re round. In New York, they’re triangular. In Rome, they’re square, but they’re called “piazzas,” which, if I don’t miss my guess, means “plazas” not “squares.”
What’s up with that?
Hmm, I suppose, if you go by the building lines around the square, then you would say that a London square is, actually, square. It’s the little parks in the middle, and the configuration of roads that make them seem round.
But the true answer is that English is a screwed-up language 😉 Every other language I know have separate words for equilateral rectangle and open-space intersection of streets.