The magnificent buildings of Corporation Street were designed to evoke a Parisian boulevard in the heart of Birmingham. The elegant red-brick buildings are the perfect backdrop to one of the city's most impressive shopping streets. Championed by Mayor Joseph Chamberlain, Corporation Street enhanced Birmingham's status as England's second city. When designed in the nineteenth century, Corporation Street was one of the grandest streets in the country, and still is today. Corporation Street was featured in Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel, 'The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk'.