Great Pulteney Street is a grand thoroughfare that connects Bathwick

Bathwick

Bathwick is an electoral ward in the City of Bath, England, on the opposite bank of the River Avon to the historic city centre.Bathwick was part of the hundred of Bath Forum....

 on the east of the River Avon with the City of Bath, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 via the Robert Adam

Robert Adam

Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...

 designed Pulteney Bridge

Pulteney Bridge

Pulteney Bridge is a bridge that crosses the River Avon, in Bath, England. It was completed in 1773 and is designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building....

. Viewed from the city side of the bridge the road leads directly to the Holburne Museum of Art

Holburne Museum of Art

The Holburne Museum of Art is in Sydney Pleasure Gardens, Sydney Place, in the Bathwick area of Bath, Somerset, England.-History:...

 that was originally the Sydney Hotel where tea rooms, card rooms a concert room and a ballroom were installed for the amusement of Bath's many visitors.

Commissioned by Sir William Pulteney, it was designed by the architect Thomas Baldwin

Thomas Baldwin (architect)

Thomas Baldwin was an English surveyor and architect in Bath.He did not originally hail from Bath but was first recorded in the city in 1774, where he was initially a clerk to plumber, glazier, and politician Thomas Warr Attwood. By 1775, he was appointed as the Bath City Architect after...

 and completed in 1789. The council wanted to expand the boundaries of the City, and Sir William's estate was conveniently situated just over the other side of the River Avon

River Avon, Bristol

The River Avon is an English river in the south west of the country. To distinguish it from a number of other River Avons in Britain, this river is often also known as the Lower Avon or Bristol Avon...

.

At over 1000 feet (304.8 m) long and 100 feet (30.5 m) wide, the road itself is the widest and grandest in Bath. The architect only constructed the façade though - developers acquired plots and built the actual structures behind. This means that, although obviously similar, many of the properties have different internal features, and some large stretches were used to build hotels.

It was intended that, along with the access provided by Pulteney Bridge, the eastern side of the Avon would be popular with speculators and developers. This appears not to have been the case — no further developments were made on this scale, and one of the side streets off Great Pulteney Street, Sunderland Street, is the shortest street in town, with only one address.
After 1789 the financial climate did not encourage further building, the Panic of 1797

Panic of 1797

The Panic of 1796–1797 was a series of downturns in Atlantic credit markets that led to broader commercial downturns in both Britain and the United States. In the U.S., problems first emerged when the Bubble of land speculation burst in 1796...

 (Deflation 1793 - 1800) was followed by the Depression of 1807.
Bath was also affected by a serious flood in 1809 which would have flooded many of the basements in Great Pulteney Street and the surrounding fields.

Famous former residents of the street have included the novelist Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

 and the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming the independent Member of Parliament for Yorkshire...

. Numbers 1 to 7 were a single government office, now designated as a Grade I listed building. Numbers 41A and 42 to 77 have also been Grade I listed.

The fountain (Great Pulteney Street/Laura Place

Laura Place, Bath

Laura Place in Bathwick, Bath, Somerset, England was built by Thomas Baldwin and John Eveleigh between 1788 and 1794.Laura Place lies at the end of Pulteney Bridge and consists of four blocks of houses around an irregular quadrangle with a fountain which was not part of the original plan and was...

) was not part of the original plan. After completion of the main street in 1877 local residents petitioned and successfully raised significant funds to build a grand column (rather like Nelson's Column

Nelson's Column

Nelson's Column is a monument in Trafalgar Square in central London built to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton at a cost of £47,000. It is a column of the Corinthian...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

). However as construction of the column started, the residents realised that the addition would tower over the area (it would be 50% taller than the houses), and so they then petitioned for it to be cancelled. After some negotiations, the column was pulled down and the much smaller fountain added instead.

Drawings of all the building plans (including many proposals that were never built) can be viewed in the Victoria Art Gallery

Victoria Art Gallery

The Victoria Art Gallery is free public art museum in Bath, Somerset, England.The building was designed in 1897 by John McKean Brydon, and has been designated as a Grade II listed building. The exterior of the building includes a statue of Queen Victoria, by A. C. Lucchesi, and friezes of...

situated on the corner of Pulteney Bridge and Grand Parade.

The fountain is a regular target for vandalism, typically being filled with soap suds late at night, this often spills onto the road creating a traffic hazard. Cleaning up after these pranks involves pumping out and refreshing all the water and has to be done out of office hours to avoid creating traffic congestion. This work is funded from the £2.2 million (2007 figure) annual council repair and maintenance programme paid for by local council taxpayers.