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SHERLOCK HOLMES MUSEUM IN BAKER STREET
The Famous Detective’s Rooms in London at 221B
It is arguably the
world’s most famous address. Famed as a fictional
place, but yet an actual place. 221B Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes
and his friend Dr. John H. Watson lived in the stories of Arthur Conan
Doyle, commencing in 1887 with "A Study in Scarlet" first published
in Beeton's Christmas Annual, then in serialized form in the Strand Magazine.
In the books and short stories that comprise the Sherlock Holmes canon,
the world’s first and most famous “consulting detective” lived
in rooms above 221B Baker Street, a quiet location in the north West
End of London, 
at the edge of Regents Park. Dr. Watson “lived” in
the rooms for much of that time except for a period after his marriage,
but eventually returning. The chronology of the stories is from 1881
to 1904, but Doyle published his last Holmes adventure in 1927. If you
had gone seeking the famous apartment up until the 1980’s, you’d
have found an assortment of local business offices. For while the famed
detective is a work of the author’s imagination, the address of
221B is real, and a little over 100 years after Holmes and Watson made
their first appearance, a museum dedicated to Sherlock Holmes took up
residence.
The Sherlock Homes
Museum at 221B Baker Street is fundamentally a commercial tourism attraction.
The "rooms", 17 steps above the street
have been recreated according to the descriptions in the Sherlock Holmes
stories to how they might have appeared if one had been able to enter
the pages. The common study has the well recognized 
deerstalker cap,
magnifying glass, calabash pipe, Persian slipper with tobacco stuffed
in the toe, chemistry equipment and disguises, though the cocaine needle
is out of sight. A flight above on the 2nd floor is Dr Watson’s
bedroom and the third floor exhibit rooms hold wax figures of the characters,
including Sherlock Holmes and Professor
Moriarty. At the front is a room for Mrs. Hudson. The rooms also display
items relating to the stories
and some invented memorabilia.
On
the street level next door is the museum souvenir shop, with shelves
of deerstalkers caps, pipes of all assortment
and even Sherlock Holmes teddy bears, and an opportunity to have your
photo taken in cap and Calabash, arm in arm with a London “bobby”.
Whether actual or fictional the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street
provides an opportunity to venture back into 1890’s Victorian London
and the mysteries of the art of detecting.
The
Sherlock
Holmes stories have been recreated many times in film and television,
all
with their own interpretation of the 221B Baker street
apartment. A new Sherlock Holmes movie
with Robert Downey, Jr. playing the iconic detective adds to the oeuvre,
opening at Christmas in
2009, though promising a new contemporary spin on the stories. Visit
Britain offers a guide to the movie locations. There are a number of
recreations of the Holmes and Watson “rooms” around
the world. In London, the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Restaurant across from
the Old Scotland Yard on Northumberland Avenue has had a version on display
since the 1950s (see Sherlock
Holmes Pub Restaurant). In Switzerland, where
Arthur Conan Doyle got the idea for killing off his lead character by
wrestling
Dr. Moriarty over the Reichenbach Falls, can be found the study room
in a former church basement in Meiringen near Interlaken where you can
stay in the fictional “Englisherhof Hotel” where Holmes and
Watson stayed while following their arch nemesis (see Sherlock
Holmes Museum Switzerland). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
son, Adrian, created a museum also in Switzerland at the "Maison
Rouge" in Lucens,
near Lake Geneva, dedicated to his father with actual papers and artifacts
of his father’s writings.
Arthur Conan Doyle never said why he chose to place his imagined stories at an actual residence. He surely investigated the rooms at the 221B Baker Street address to write about them in his stories, redecorating them with a pen in the “lumber room of his mind”. It has been speculated Doyle’s’ detective was modeled partly on Oliver Wendell Holmes, though Conan Doyle acknowledged being inspired by one of his college professors, Joseph Bell. Watson was partly modeled on a medical practice partner, George Budd. Apparently, an actual Dr. Watson who made artificial teeth and dental appliances occupied an office next door to 221B and some maids who served there were related to someone named Holmes, though that’s about as close to truth in fiction as it gets.
The
Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street is open every day except Christmas and
is located
a block north from the Baker Street tube stop
on the Bakerloo line, around the corner from the famous Madame Tussaud’s
Wax Museum where the various London Bus Tours (see Big
Bus and Original Bus Tours) stop and past the bronze statue
of the iconic character. Admission to the museum is £6 for adults
and £4
for children under 16yrs.
If you want to stay in your own Holmes rooms, the Sherlock
Holmes Hotel is a block away on Baker Street across Marylebone Road (see Sherlock
Holmes Hotel) where one can imagine the detective retiring to open a
his own bar. © Bargain
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Sherlock
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See Also:
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CHURCHILL MUSEUM AND CABINET WAR ROOMS
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