Which brings up a good question.

What became of 221b when Holmes finally moved out?
Did the next tenant realize who had lived there?

From the same source. . . .

The Scene of Deduction: Drawing 221B Baker Street

From pen-and-ink sketches to digital renderings, generations of Sherlock Holmes fans have undertaken drafting the detective's famous London flat

By Jimmy Stamp

SMITHSONIAN.COM AUGUST 14, 201

Ernest H. Short’s drawing of 221B Baker St. for The Strand Magazine (image: Ernest H. Short via Sherlockian)

When Sherlock Holmes walks into a crime scene, he displays the uncanny ability to deduce how the crime unfolded: where the criminal entered, how the victim was murdered, what weapons were used, and so on. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard must follow procedure, cordoning off and documenting the crime scene in order to reconstruct the criminal narrative. A crime scene sketch is an important part of this process. Typically, a floor plan is drawn before a building is constructed, but the crime scene sketch is a particularly noteworthy exception, as it not only verifies information in crime scene photographs, but includes dimensions and measurement that establish precise locations of evidence and objects relative to the space of the room. This information, properly obtained, can be used to assist both the investigation and the court case. But what if this investigative method is used on the flat of the world’s most famous detective?

221B Baker Street is rarely the scene of the crime (there are exceptions, such as “The Adventure of the Dying Detective”), but is instead the scene of the deduction, where Sherlock smokes his pipe or plays his violin while unraveling the latest mystery brought to his doorstep. Whether made by pencil or computer, these architectural drawings represent a reversal of the building-plan relationship. We’ve previously described the extent to which some Sherlock Holmes devotees have constructed their own version of 221B in tribute to the great detective. However, those with a curious mind who lack the resources to collect enough Victorian antiques to recreate the famous London flat are not excluded from the game. In fact, their pen-and-paper speculative reconstructions are not limited by cost and space. With such freedom, is it possible to determine what 221B Baker street truly looked like? As with the full reconstructions, there are many different speculative floor plans on 221B, ranging from the crude to the highly detailed. Most of these scholarly drawings are found exclusively in the pages of Sherlockian journals and club publications, but two of the most widely circulated plans will suffice to illustrate the complexities of rendering a literary space.

In 1948, Ernest H. Short drafted what would be one of the more widely circulated and thorough renderings of 221B when it was published in the pages of The Strand Magazine in 1950. Short’s drawing includes the rooms and furniture of Holmes’s flat, as well as sundry artifacts from his adventures and annotations noting the origin of each item. Traces of Holmes’s exploits and evidence of his proclivities line the walls and adorn the shelves. The Baker Street flat is a reflection of its occupant: his violin, his pipe, his costume closet. Chris Redmond, of the expansive Holmesian resource Sherlockian.net has called it “probably the most elegant re-creation of the sitting-room and adjacent rooms in Holmes and Watson’s lodgings.” His claim was likely true until 1995, when illustrator Russell Stutler drew 221B for an article in the Financial Times.

Russell Stutler’s drawing of 221B Baker St. for the Financial Times (image: Russell Stutler)

Stutler created his rendering after reading through every Sherlock Holmes story twice and taking extensive notes of every single detail mentioned about the flat. The details of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are full of contradictions that Sherlockians revel in rationalizing, and the various descriptions of Holmes’s flat are no exception. Most famously, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” presents some difficulties for those reconstructing 221B, as evidenced by some of the clumsy resolutions in Short’s drawing. Stutler notes:

“The Adventure of the Beryl Cornet” implies that Holmes’ room (called his “chamber”) is on the floor above the sitting room while “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” clearly puts Holmes’ bedroom just off the sitting room where it communicates with the alcove of the bow window. If you need to reconcile these two descriptions you can assume that at some point in time, Holmes moved his bed down to the room next to the sitting room. This could be the same room just off the sitting room which had been used as a temporary waiting room in “The Adventure of Black Peter.” The room upstairs could then be used as a lumber room dedicated to Holmes’ stacks of newspapers and “bundles of manuscript…which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner” as mentioned in the “The Musgrave Ritual.” “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons” does mention a lumber room upstairs packed with daily papers.

As we’ve seen previously, these ostensible inconsistencies in Conan Doyle’s stories can be quite rationally explained by a well-informed Sherlockian. After all, as Holmes reminded Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” I highly recommend reading Stutler’s full post, which includes a list of every reference used to create the image as well as a fully-annotated version of the above drawing.

More recently, the BBC television series Sherlock has introduced an entirely new generation of potential Sherlockians to the world’s only consulting detective. Some of these men and women have already dedicated themselves to analyzing the series, which presents an entirely new canon—clever interpretations of the original stories—for mystery enthusiasts to dissect and discuss. Instead of thumbing through a text page after page in search of clues describing 221B, these new digital drafstmen are more likely to pause a digital video frame by frame to dutifully reconstruct, in digital form, the new version of the famous flat now occupied by Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes and Martin Freeman’s Watson. These contemporary Sherlockians turn to free drafting software or video games instead of pen and paper. The following renderings, for example, come from the free drafting program Sketchup and the video game Minecraft.

A Sketchup rendering of 221B Baker St. as seen in the BBC series “Sherlock” (image: livejournal user static lights via Sherlock BBC Livejournal)

A Minecraft rendering of 221B Baker St. as seen in the BBC series “Sherlock”(image: created by themixedt4pe via the Planet Minecraft forum)

If documentation, speculation, and informed reconstruction of a crime scenes make the criminal narrative clear, then perhaps applying the process to a “deduction scene” can do the same for the detective’s literary narrative. Like the crime scene sketch, the above deduction scene sketches of 221B Baker St are architectural drawings created ex post facto with the intent to clearly illustrate a narrative in pursuit of understanding.  In “The Five Deadly Pips” Sherlock Holmes himself states that “The observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents, should be able accurately to state all the other ones, both before and after.” By drawing 221B , the reader or viewer gains a more thorough understanding of one link in Holmes’s life, his flat, and can perhaps then, by Holmes’s logic, gain more insight into the life and actions of the famous detective that continues to capture the world’s imagination.

This is the sixth and final post in our series on Design and Sherlock Holmes. Our previous investigations looked into Mind Palaces, The tech tool of a modern Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes’s original tools of deduction, Holmes’s iconic deerstalker hat, and the mysteriously replicating flat at 221b Baker Street.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-scene-of-deduction-drawing-221b-baker-street-23049988/#dBuRBGOrR3uCGVRD.99
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Ah, to have a room like one of these in my basement .. . . . . .

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson drawn by Sidney Paget in The Adventure of Silver Blaze (image: Sidney Paget, Wikimedia commons)

The Game is afoot, dear reader. For today, Design Decoded starts its newest series as the world turns its eyes to London for the Olympics: Design and Sherlock Holmes. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the incomparable consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his intrepid assistant Doctor John Watson made their debut in A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887 in the the pages of Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Though the last canonical adventure of Holmes and Watson was published in 1927, Sherlock Holmes is still an international cultural icon. In fact, he may be more popular today than ever before. The zeitgeist is saturated with all things Holmesian: two Hollywood films; a recent BBC television series; another forthcoming series for American television; and then there are the countless television shows, plays, and films inspired by the adventures of Holmes and Watson. Indeed, we can perhaps trace the entire “buddy-cop” genre back to Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective duo.

Let us begin our series today by stalking down the gas-lit streets of Victorian London, and turning our magnifying glass toward an architecture that was defined by Holmes and Watson and poses something of a mystery itself: their London flat at 221B Baker Street.

Baker Street circa 1890 (original image: George Washginton Bacon’s New Map of London, via wikimedia commons)

The mystery of 221B Baker Street is not one of secret passages or hidden symbols. Rather, it could be described as a sort of existential spatial riddle: how can a space that is not a space be where it is not? According to Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson lived at 221B Baker Street from 1881 to 1904. But 221B Baker street did not exist in 1881, nor did it exist in 1887 when A Study in Scarlet was published and Baker Street house numbers only extended into the 100s. It was a purely fictional address – emphasis on was. Time marches on, Baker Streets are renumbered, and 221Bs are revealed.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum)

If you visit 221B Baker Street today you’ll find the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which was opened in 1990 by the Sherlock Holmes International Society. But the Sherlock Holmes museum is not, technically speaking, located at 221 Baker Street. In fact, there is still no 221 Baker Street. Since the 1930s, the famous address has been lumped in as part of a larger block of buildings originally occupied by the Abbey National Building Society. From almost the day the Abbey National opened they began receiving letters from all over the world addressed to Mr. Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. Such a profusion of letters were delivered that the bank’s public relations department found it necessary to employ a full-time secretary charged with responding to the urgent inquiries from those in need of Holmes’s unique deductive prowess (these inquiries were usually met with a response that the detective had retired to keep bees in Sussex).

When the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened at 239 Baker Street in a Georgian townhouse that likely bears a close resemblance to Conan Doyle’s imagined 221 Baker street, there emerged a dispute over which business should receive the letters. The new museum argued that they were better equipped to respond to the inquiries while the Abbey National presumably wanted to continue their accidental role as the secretary to a fictional detective. The debate lasted more than a decade and was not resolved until 2002, when the Abbey National vacated their building and the Royal Mail finally agreed to deliver all letters addressed to 221B Baker Street to the museum at 239 Baker Street. The Sherlock Holmes Museum, which includes a full replica of Holmes’s flat, was also allowed by special permission of the City of Westminster, to bear the address 221B – although its physical location is still found between 237 and 241. To recap: a fictional flat in a real city has been made a reality at a fictional address in the real city near the real address of the fictional flat. Confused yet? The controversy doesn’t end there.

The fact that there is no real 221 Baker Street has not stopped literary historians from speculating about which Baker Street building Doyle used as his proxy for the home of Holmes and Watson. By closely reading the texts, scholars have proposed multiple Baker Street addresses as a possible inspiration for the literary 221, yet there is no definitive answer. Equally vexing is the design and furnishing of the famous flat itself.

When the Baker Street flat is introduced in A Study in Scarlet, the rooms receive little attention other than the note that they meet the needs of Messrs. Holmes and Watson and consist of “a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows.” There are other equally brief descriptions scattered throughout Holmes canon, but usually nothing more than a few words. Yet from these scant clues, dedicated collectors around the world have been inspired to reconstruct their own versions of 221B.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221B Baker Street (image: © The Sherlock Holmes Museum)

Perhaps the most visited replica of 221B is the aforementioned recreation at the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street, which promises visitors that “the interior has been faithfully maintained for posterity exactly as described in the published stories.” The Museum flat may also be the most complete of the many 221Bs, as it includes Watson’s bedroom on the second floor whereas most reconstructions focus solely on Holmes’s sitting room.

“Visitors can sit in Mr Holmes’s armchair by the fireside to pose for photos, and enter his bedroom adjoining the study; but please bring your own pipe to smoke!  His possessions are in their usual places: his deerstalker, magnifying glass, calabash pipe, violin, chemistry equipment, notebook, Persian slipper and disguises.”

In this sitting room, visitors will find the original wicker chair referenced by famed Holmes illustrator Sidney Paget in his portrayal of the seated detective. In a sense, it could be argued that this chair is Holmes’s chair. But while the flat includes many recognizable Holmesian artifacts and ephemera, certain inferences must be made to complete the fictional Victorian setting. Such a replica is essentially an architecture of deduction – a physical manifestation of Sherlock Holmes’s signature art form. But unlike Holmes’s brilliant deductions, the answer is never certain. The pipe and magnifying glass, the many newspapers and books and test tubes – these things are an index of the life of Sherlock Holmes. But the wallpaper selection, choice of period furniture, the selection of books on Holmes’s shelves – these are pure extrapolations that reflect that taste, style, and opinions of the collector. Indeed, when it comes to the mystery of 221B Baker Street, there are as many deductions as there are detectives.

221B Baker Street at the Sherlock Holmes Pub (image: The Sherlock Holmes Pub)

If you’re in the mood for enjoying a pint while viewing a recreation of 221B, you’ll want to head over to The Sherlock Holmes Pub in London, which has the honor of housing the first collection of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. Originally assembled for an exhibition in 1951 as part of the the Festival of Britain, the pub’s collection includes the desk and chair used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write many of the Holmes adventures, as well as a chair that belonged to Paget. The pub also claims to be a part of Holmesian lore itself – specifically, the site where the detective tracked down a suspect in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor.” Not only that, but it stands in close proximity to other prominent locations frequented by Holmes and Watson.

“Old Scotland Yard is just across the other side of Northumberland Avenue, and the Turkish baths that Holmes and Watson used to enjoy were right beside the Hotel. It is still possible in fact to see the entrance, which now forms part of the wall of the bank in Craven Passage. With Charing Cross Station immediately beside the pub, one can just imagine the duo dashing off to catch a train into the countryside on one of their hair raising adventures!”

The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Meiringen, Switzerland (image: Catherine Batac Walder and Mike Walder, via Fine Books & Collections)

Just as the adventures of Holmes and Watson sometimes took them out of London to exotic locales around the world, the same holds true for their surprisingly mobile flat. Another replica of 221B Baker Street is located in The Sherlock Holmes Museum at Meiringen, Switzerland near the Reichenbach Falls, the site of the climactic final battle between Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. The Meiringen Museum claims to have the largest collection of Holmes ephemera, as well as the most accurate reproduction of the famed sitting room, reconstructed by Tony Howlett, former President of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and architect John Reid. Its windows are authentic to the era, made in London and shipped to Switzerland; the wallpaper is designed after an 1890s pattern and was bought on High Street in London; the fireplace, oil lamps, and other Holmesian paraphernalia are all authentic Victorian antiques.

221B at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Lucens, Switzerland (image: The Reichenbach Irregulars)

There is another 221B replica at another Sherlock Holmes museum in Switzerland, an older one established in 1965 at a hotel in Lucens, which was frequently visited by Conan Doyle’s son. It’s interesting to note that all these 221Bs have been purposely arranged to look as if Holmes and Watson had left only moments ago. It seems as if pipe smoke should still be lingering in the air. Looking at the scattered newspapers, books, and teacups, one can imagine the detective springing up from his chair, hot on the heels of a suspect or following a new lead. The carefully curated disarray suggests an unknown narrative, a new mystery for readers to imagine.

The 221B Room at the University of Minnesota (image: still from The University of Minnesota Videos)

Yet another 221B can be found across the ocean on the fourth floor of the Wilson Library at the University of Minnesota, which also has the distinct honor of being home to the world’s largest collection of ephemera related to Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. “The 221B Room,” as it is known, was donated by the estate of Holmes collector Allen Mackler, who painstakingly recreated Holmes’s sitting room in his own home using authentic period artifacts. Mackler’s room was then moved piece-by-piece to the University library.

The 221B room at the home of Allen Mackler (image: The University of Minnesota Libraries)

There are surely many other partially reconstructed 221Bs in the homes of private collectors around the world.  And then there are the myriad sets built for film and television, some of which loyally followed Conan Doyle’s text in the crafting.

These replicas, especially those that have been relocated, call to mind a similar reconstruction, Julia Child’s kitchen in the American History Museum, which was painstakingly moved from her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts – cabinets, appliances, cookbooks, kitchen table, utensils, gadgets and all. Visitors to Julia’s kitchen (though the exhibition is currently closed for renovation) get a sense for how she worked, how she lived, and what she was like as a person. Architecture and interior spaces are records of our lives; they are extensions of our own identities. In the same way that visitors to Julia’s kitchen gain new insight into the life of the famous chef, the visitors to one of Sherlock’s many flats can gain insight into the proclivities of the famous detective and his life in Victorian London.

There is, of course, one major difference between Julia’s kitchen and Holmes’s sitting room: Julia Child is a real person. Her kitchen in the Smithsonian was her real kitchen. It is a real space. Holmes’s flat, on the other hand, was not. It can’t properly be called a “replica” or “reconstruction” because it never truly existed. Instead, the many 221Bs could more properly be considered a simulacrum—unless you’re a Sherlockian abiding by the rules of the Game, in which case the study is very much a recreation of a true place. The Game is a sort of friendly competition among Holmes scholars, created to explain the many inconsistencies in Conan Doyle’s quickly-written stories using Sherlock’s own methods of deduction. Timothy J. Johnson of the University of Minnesota explained one of the most important rules of the Game in a correspondence with a peer who was critical of his intent to create a “replica” of a fictional space:

“According to the rules of the Game, Holmes is considered a real person, who has never died (no obituary having appeared in The Times), and Doyle is merely the ‘literary agent’….One looks at all the descriptions of the room as provided in the stories and creates a replica. There’s a whole little industry in the Holmesian world that has spent time and ink describing the exact location of 221B Baker Street and the contents of the room.”

By the logic of the game, those Sherlockians looking for the Arthur Conan Doyle’s inspiration for 221B are, in fact, searching for the true apartments of Holmes and Watson, which were obviously disguised in Watson’s “memoirs” with a false address. The line between fiction and reality is blurred for the most ardent fans of Sherlock Holmes.

While it can be argued that the non-Baker Street flats are less authentic, in that they exist independently from their historical context, it could also just as easily be argued that there is no real historical context. After all, 221B Baker Street does not now exist, nor has it ever existed. These replicas are all, to one degree or another, authentic recreations. But is any 221B more authentic than another? How does a non-Game-player measure the authenticity of a place that isn’t real? By location? By how closely it resembles the sparse descriptions and illustrations in the original text? Or perhaps by the authenticity of the Victorian antiques used in crafting the reproduction?

As a real manifestation of a fiction, the many 221Bs attest to the power of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing. So strongly do the Holmes stories resonate with our culture that we have manifested his home in our own reality, creating shrines and sites of pilgrimage across the world. But these “replicas” also attest to the power of architecture and interior design, which by their very nature make things real. Every building and space is a manifestation of narratives that results from a confluence of theories, politics, cultural beliefs, pragmatic necessities and opinions. But not only is the built environment a manifestation of these narratives, it’s also a venue for new narratives. Stories are an inherent part of the architectural process. The reconstructions of Sherlock Holmes’s flat at 221B Baker Street just makes that much more explicit.

Source

The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes - St Louis Science Center

As St Louis Sherlockains we are lucky that our Science Center is one of the host cities for The International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes.
I am luck enough to have a little time off of work and was able to attend it yesterday.

 Unlike Holmes, I can not start a 'case' without a good breakfast.
So, since we were in the area we hit a St Louis landmark, 'Courtesy Cafe' . . .

 But, like Holmes, I do need a good assistant.

 Several blocks around the Science Center had banners and signs advertising the exhibit.
And since this is right along Hwy 70 it should get peoples attention.

 Sign along the side walk.

 Waiting in line to use the phone.

 Inside advertisement.
A little hokey but okay.

 After handing over your tickets, you walk into the gallery. The first, as should be, is devoted to Doyle, Victorian medicine and the creation of Holmes. For the older Sherlockains amongst us, there could have been a little bit more about Doyle, but what they had was a good introduction.

Poe is also give some credit for being an early founder of the form.

 Early medicine and its tools.

We were not allowed to use flash, so I could not get the photos I really would have liked.
This display shows Bells teaching gown and some of his letters. There was a very good nod to Dr. Bell. And a very good painting of him.

 The displays were very well done and very well lit.
Some were just around to set the theme, while others were relevant to the display.

Here is assistant with London street window, which on the other side was part of Baker St.

 After the displays about Doyle and Bell, we came to a section on the manuscripts and how they appeared in publication.

There were many first additions and rare letter and art work.

To the true Sherlockain of early work this was indeed a treat.

Very good labeling and numbering described each piece.

First edition Hound and letters from Doyle.

 Strand and other magazines on display.


















After the historical displays about Doyle and Holmes the next section was devoted to understanding forensic science of the time. The displays were set up to help you understand the mystery you could be solving later in the exhibition. Each station would be relevant later in the show. The lighting was not good enough for me to get many pictures of this part, but the displays were fun and educational. Aimed at the younger participants.

 They also had period hosts wondering around to help and answer any questions.
Hear is one posing with daughter.

 Next you came to several displays set up to represent 221b Baker St.  It was broken up into four sections instead of one room. But, although broken up, to aid with the mystery people were working on, they were still very well done.


Here is the seats around the fireplace.

 By the window and the wax statue of Holmes.

Each room had several things in them that visitors needed to find as sort of a scavenger hunt.

 Seats by the fireplace again.

Although the items needing to be found were very Canonical, there was no explanation for the non-Sherlockian on how they appeared in the stories.

 Holmes' chemical desk.

 Pipe and tea cup.

 Watson writing desk.


















After viewing the rooms at 221b you went into a section where the below room was set up as a crime scene. You were to observe numbered items in the room as clues and then go to station where four examples or explanations of the clues were shown. You had to pick the one that you thought best matched the crime scene. It was a little confusing, but very fun. (Or maybe I am just not a good detective.)
Again the lighting was not good enough for my camera to get good photos of the stations.

 The crime scene.

 After solving (or not) the mystery you entered the gallery that displayed items that have used Sherlocks representation of the years.

Here you can see 'Young Sherlock Holmes' and other movie stuff.

 Games and toys that have used his likeness.

 Some of my favorite things were all the art work by Paget and Steele.

Covers, sketches, prints, etc.

 I love these two.

Steele's work on early covers.

 More toys/

 'Peanuts'.

 Lots of movie props from some of the latest works.

Here is Blackwood's coffin from the first RDJ movie.

 Other props from that movie.

 And again.

 The lock wall from 'Elementary'.

 One of Lucy Liu's outfits from 'Elementary'.

 Miller's outfit from 'Elementary'.

 Do you recognize these from 'Sherlock'?

This last gallery was a great experience for anyone in to the movie or TV world of Holmes.












Over all the exhibition was very well done, with things to be found for die hard Sherlockians or casual fan. Most of it pertained to the Canonical Holmes more than the movie or modern Holmes, with just enough of that for those interested.
It was mostly aimed for a family experience but I saw a lot of adult Sherlockians taking it in.
The science center asked for volunteers to help at things like this and we spotted several local Sherlockians we knew.
If it come near you, you should go. I plan on trying to volunteer at least a few times.
We enjoyed it very much.