View of Strand and Charing Cross Station, City of Westminster. A major thoroughfare, the Strand runs east to west from Trafalgar Square to Temple Bar. Named from the Old English 'strond', meaning the edge of a river, as before modern embankments and land reclamation it ran alongside the north bank of the River Thames. A busy street scene with numerous pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles, including Hansom cabs, one in the foreground with a bicycle on the roof. Open-top buses carry advertisements for Pears Soap, Nestle Milk, and the Alhambra Theatre. On the left in the foreground a policeman looks at the camera. To the right is the terminus hotel of the Charing Cross Railway, now the Charing Cross Hotel. Built in 1863-4 in French Renaissance style by Edmund Middleton Barry, son of Sir Charles Barry. With 214 rooms, the total build cost including furnishings came to over £150,000. It suffered bomb damage in World War II and was reconstructed in 1953 by F. J. Wills and Son. Grade II listed, number 1236707. Barry also designed the station forecourt and designed the replica of the original Charing Cross, the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross, carved by the firm of Thomas Earp in Portland stone on an Aberdeen granite plinth. Octagonal, with a spire and cross and in fourteenth-century style, it is Grade II* listed, number 1236708. The original Eleanor Cross was one of twelve memorial crosses erected by Edward I of England in memory of his first wife Eleanor of Castille. Number 32 Strand is a four-storey building on the corner with Villiers Street with a frieze on the parapet advertising Chapple and Mantell Silversmiths and Goldsmiths, who specialised in reproduction early-Georgian silverware. Villiers Street connects the Strand with the Embankment and was built by Nicholas Barbon in the 1670s on the site of York House, the property of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Other buildings on Villiers Street carry signs for 'Charing Larder, Luncheons, Dinners, Tea and Coffee' and 'Challice Dispensing Chemist, English and American'. These buildings were demolished and on the site is a modern office block. On the left is a triangular island block of shops and offices built 1830-32 as part of the West Strand Improvements, planned by architect John Nash and executed by William Herbert between the Strand, Adelaide Street and William IV Street (formerly King William Street). Numbers 448 and 449 are circular corner pavilions, known as "pepper pots", with three storeys and an attic with a balustrade, and cast-iron balconies around the first floor. 449 is occupied by The Midland Bank, and 448 by The West Strand Telegraph Company. This was the 'Central Station' of the Electric Telegraph Company, which was established in 1846 by Act of Parliament to connect major cities and towns by electric telegraph. The block is Grade II* listed, number 1237040.