A house built c.1737 and one of Mayfair's oldest surviving houses. It was originally at the less fashionable end of the street and was occupied by various tradesmen before becoming a lodging house for the last half of the 19th century. The house was enlarged in 1915 and subsequent residents included a Broadway producer and an American banker involved in the collapse of Farrow's Bank in 1920. Thousands of people lost every penny they had, amongst them large numbers of clergymen. In the early 1930s Peter Watson lived here - he became one of the European art market's wealthiest patrons and the man who helped launch the careers of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. He was also a co-founder of the magazine Horizon and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He met a squalid end - not in this house - probably murdered in his bath by a male lover who stood to inherit the bulk of his fortune and his extensive art collection.
