All is not what it seems in the city of London. Walking down the street, you might think you see a continuous line of well-appointed London homes, when in fact you’re witnessing an illusion that’s more than 150 years old.
Just a few blocks from London’s famed Hyde Park lie two ordinary looking buildings that actually aren’t buildings at all. The Leinster Gardens false façades are a pair of fake houses located at 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens in stylish Bayswater.
The false façades are the result of a compromise reached between the Metropolitan Railway Company and the local residents. In the 1980s, the Metropolitan Railway was expanding its network and needed to build a tunnel through Leinster Gardens. This required the demolishing of two houses, numbers 23 and 24. Residents were concerned that this would destroy the otherwise uniform look of the buildings on this block.
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The railway proposed that it would build false façades for the two demolished houses. The façades would be constructed of the same brick and stone that the neighboring houses featured, and the results would be identical to the façades of the neighboring houses. The only difference would be that there would not be any actual houses behind the façades . The residents agreed to this compromise, and the façades were built in 1868.
In addition to being a historical curiosity, the false façades have also been used for practical jokes and the occasional scam. In the early 1900s, some folks thought it would be a hoot to send delivery drivers to the non-existent homes. (This was apparently before actual comedy was invented.) In the 1930s, a group of con artists sold tickets to a charity ball that was purportedly being held at the fake homes. Needless to say, no such ball ever occurred.
The Leinster Gardens false façades have become a fairly popular tourist attraction, a footnote to the sometimes colorful history of London, and an enduring reminder of how quirky the British sense of humor can be.
Back view of the façade at 23-24 Leinster Gardens by Sebastian Bremicker licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
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