Burlington Arcade

I found out the other day that there is a Burlington Arcade in Pasadena.  I'll have to go along and do a piece on it, although I doubt it will have quite the same mystique as the original one in London's West End.
A week or so ago I posted a photo of the original in The Big Picture.  I took it on my recent trip to London.

The Arcade was originally built by Lord George Cavendish and opened in 1819.  It seems the Lord was tired of people throwing oyster shells over his garden wall, and he built this arcade to put some space between him and the hoi polloi.

Originally the arcade, which was London's first covered "market," had 70 shops but over the years this number has been compressed to 40.  The original plan was to build a place suitable to offer ..."jewellery and fancy articles of fashionable demand, for the gratification of the public."  Still to this day it continues to do so.

I told my grandson (16) when I had walked him to the end of it, that when he had made his fortune and brought his lady here, the idea is to buy her a little something in the arcade, and then when arriving at the Piccadilly end to walk her down to the Ritz hotel for some afternoon tea.  Currently the tea will cost approximately $75 each, so it better be a big fortune!  For more information here is the wikipedia site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Arcade  where you can read about the stunning jewelly heist carried out in 1964, aboard a Jaguar Mark X.