221B Baker Street

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced Sherlock Holmes in eighteen eighty-seven, the address he chose was a deliberate fiction. At that time, Baker Street did not extend far enough north to include a number two hundred twenty-one. By selecting a number that did not exist, Conan Doyle successfully protected the privacy of actual residents from being bothered by fans of his new character. The street was eventually renumbered in the nineteen thirties, which unintentionally transformed a literary invention into a real location that appeared on city maps.