Praed Street was originally laid out in the early 19th century, being built up in 1828. It was named after William Praed, chairman of the company which built the canal basin which lies just to the north.[2]
In 1893 plans were put forward by the Edgware Road and Victoria Railway company to build an underground railway along the Edgware Road which included the construction of a Tube station at Praed Street. The scheme was rejected by Parliament and the line was never built.[3]
American poet Richard Hugo wrote the poem "Walking Praed Street", which first appeared in his book of poems, The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir. The poem's first two lines are said[by whom?] to be two of the greatest American lines ever written: "I've walked this street in far too many towns./ The weather, briefly: in Salerno, rain."
Praed Street appeared in the political thriller novel House of Cards, and subsequently in its television adaptation, as an accommodation address set up by main protagonist Francis Urquhart as part of a plot to force the resignation of the sitting Prime Minister.[6]
Praed Street is mentioned in Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. Somebody compares a house there with the house (Bramford in New York) where the protagonists live: "There was a house in London, on Praed Street, in which five separate brutal murders took place within sixty years."
In The Dark Labyrinth by Lawrence Durrell, a character complains he 'could not be carried away by fairy tales of the Second Coming written in this Praed Street vein' (chapter three).