Viewed from the Southwest, ca. 1841. For the first two decades of London's existence the Court House Square was the unchallenged focal point and the Dundas-Ridout intersection the most important crossroads in the town. This watercolour by George Russell Dartnell (1798-1878), a British surgeon stationed in London, shows the Square prior to the construction of the still surviving Jail. To the immediate left of the Court House is Dennis O'Brien's brick block, completed in 1837. Part of the Robinson Hall Hotel appears to the extreme right; it was in the hotel's stables that the Great Fire of 1845 began.
