Numbers 6 and 13 Bedford Square and a number of details in those houses are repeated here. Although it sits outside the uniform symmetrical east side of the square, it has always been part of it and appropriately has always been numbered 1. The house is distinguished by its central entrance, rare for a three bay Georgian terraced house because such an arrangement required an ingenious plan to accommodate the staircase. The front door leads into an entrance hall which is flanked by two separate spaces, an anteroom to the right and the fine stone staircase to the left. With the staircase in the front of the house, Leverton was able to design full width rooms to the rear half which took full advantage of the view over the established gardens of the British Museum. There is a particularly fine decorative plaster ceiling in the first floor rear room. The house was threatened with demolition by the British Museum in 1860, along with Numbers 2 and 3 and the fourteen houses to the south in Bloomsbury Street, but nothing came of the museum's plans. Then in the early 1930s a new building was planned which would stand only 20 feet from the rear elevation of Number 1. The threat produced an article in Country Life that heralded the house as "a masterpiece of English architecture" and of "exceptional merit". Support came from Sir Edwin Lutyens, former resident of Number 31 Bedford Square for three years from 1915, who described the house as a "most interesting house ... of exceptional quality". The British Museum's Duveen Gallery was built shortly before the Second World War and today its plain brick flank wall is the view from the house rather than the gardens of the museum, which was such an important consideration in Thomas Leverton's original designs for the house. Conservation Bedford Square is one of the best preserved set pieces of Georgian architecture in London, but most of the houses have now been converted into offices. Numbers 1–10, 11, 12–27, 28–38 and 40–54 are grade I listed buildings. Garden The central garden remains private, but is opened to the public as part of the Open Garden Squares Weekend. The square is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Former occupants Bedford College, the first place for female higher education in Britain, was originally located in (and named after)