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Mansion House Street.— Many Londoners would deny that such a Street exists, but, in fact, the few houses at the end of the Poultry, facing the Mansion House, and the Mansion House itself, officially stand in Mansion House-street. We apply the term for convenience to the open space in front of the Mansion House, where Cheapside, Princes-street, Threadneedle - street, Cornhill, Lombard. street, King William-street, and Queen Victoria-street unite. As Chasing-cross is the heart of all London, this great junction is the heart of the City and the traffic that meets and crosses here is bewildering. With the exception, to some extent, of Lombard-street, all these streets are main arteries of traffic, and their united flow is so confusingly great that a timid person would it absolutely impossible to effect a crossing from the Bank to the Mansion House without assistance. Here are the three great centres of City life. The Bank of England, the Royal Exchange—which contains Lloyd’s —and the Mansion House. In the streets around are all the great banking establishments of London, and the wealth within a quarter of a mile radius of this spot is incalculable. Of all the sights of London there is nothing which fills a foreigner with such a sense of amazement and admiration as the mighty ceaseless flow of traffic in front of the Mansion House.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879