Buckingham Palace forms the architectural core of the palace was built for the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby in 1703 to the design of William Winde. The style chosen was of a large, three-floored central block with two smaller flanking service wings. Buckingham House was eventually sold by Buckingham's natural son, Sir Charles Sheffield, in 1761 to George III for £21,000. Sheffield's leasehold on the mulberry garden site, the freehold of which was still owned by the royal family, was due to expire in 1774. Under the new Crown ownership, the building was originally intended as a private retreat for King
John Nash (architect) onwards, which stretched from St James's northwards and included Regent Street, Regent's Park (1809–1832) and its neighbouring streets, terraces and crescents of elegant town houses and villas. Nash did not design all the buildings himself; in some instances, these were left in the hands of other architects such as James Pennethorne and the young Decimus Burton. Nash went on to re-landscape St. James's Park (1814–1827), reshaping the formal canal into the present lake, and giving the park its present form. A characteristic of Nash's plan for Regent Street was that it followed an irregular path linking Portland Place to the