The Strand has now become a street of shops instead of a street of palaces; it has been, but is no more, a fashionable resort; it has been a place for the lodgings of visitors, and still has many small hotels and boarding-houses in its riverside lanes; its personal associations are many, but not so important as those in the City or Westminster; it is a street of great interest, but its architectural glories have almost all vanished. Beginning at the west end, we note on the north side the Golden Cross Hotel, rebuilt. This is the successor of a famous old coaching inn, which stood further west. On the south side is Craven Street, formerly Spur Alley, where once Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7. The site of Hungerford Market is now covered by the Charing Cross railway-station. In Charing Cross station-yard is a modern reproduction of the original Queen Eleanor's Cross. The market was built in 1680, rebuilt in 1831, and stretched to the river. The name will always be connected with that of Charles Dickens, and with "David Copperfield." Beside the market was the suspension bridge constructed by Brunel, opened in 1845, and removed to make room for the railway-bridge. On the site of Hungerford Market there stood the "Inn" or House of the Bishop of Norwich. In 1536 Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, exchanged his house in Southwark for this place; twenty years later it fell into the hands of Heath, Archbishop of York, who called it York House, and in the reign of James I. it became the property of the Crown. Bacon was born in this house. In 1624 the Duke of Buckingham obtained the house; he pulled it down, and began to build a large mansion to take its place. The watergate is the only part of his structure still existing. Cromwell gave the house to Fairfax, whose daughter married the second Duke of Buckingham, of the Villiers family. In 1655 Evelyn describes the house as "much ruined through neglect." In 1672 the house and gardens were sold to four persons of Westminster, who laid out the site in streets, viz., Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham Street, and Of Alley, forming in conjunction the words Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. York House was pulled down soon after, and York Buildings erected on the site. Peter the Great had lodgings in York Buildings during his visit to England, and Pepys occupied a house on the west side, near the river, for some time. The gardens of the Victoria Embankment now fill up the space over which the river formerly flowed, and the watergate is merely a meaningless ornament 100 yards or more from the water. At the corner of Agar and King William Streets, on the north, is the Charing Cross Hospital, founded 1818, and built on the present site in 1831, the architect being Decimus Burton. It is a dreary stuccoed building, with a rounded end, and contains nothing that specially marks it out from other general hospitals.