Seth Smith.

About Seth Smith

Seth Smith was a London property developer, who was responsible in the early part of the 19th century for developing large parts of the West End of London, including the Belgravia and Mayfair districts. Much of the West End in the 1820s was an undesirable, swampy, crime-infested area on the outskirts of the city, but Smith with Thomas Cubitt and the Cundy brothers, notably Thomas Cundy (junior), envisioned several large-scale development projects that transformed the West End into a thriving part of the city. Although most of Smith's buildings in the now affluent Mayfair district have since been demolished, many of his Belgravia buildings still stand including the pantechnicon from which the name of the van derives from. Smith made his home at Eaton Square in Belgravia, which was part of one of his development projects. He died on 18 June 1860 at the age of 68 in the St George Hanover Square parish of London, and he is buried in West Norwood Cemetery.