Temple Bar was the ceremonial entrance gate between the City of London and the City of Westminster. From the 17th to the late 19th century, a Baroque archway gate designed by Sir Christopher Wren was located on the site.

In London Labour and the London Poor edition: 

Phase 1

London Considered as a Great World. (The Great World of London): "Viewing the Great Metropolis, therefore, as an absolute world, Belgravia and Bethnal Green become the opposite poles of the London sphere - the frigid zones, as it were, of the Capital; the one icy cold from its exceeding fashion, form, and ceremony; and the other wrapt in a perpetual winter of withering poverty. Of such a world, Temple Bar is the unmistakable equator, dividing the City hemisphere from that of the West End, and with a line of Banks, representative of the Gold Coast, in its immediate neighbourhood. What Greenwich, too, is to the merchant seamen of England, Charing Cross is to the London cabmen - the zero from which all the longitudes of the Metropolitan world are measured."

A Visit to the Rookery of St. Giles and its Neighbourhood. (Volume 4): "Elbowing our way through the throng of people, we pass through one of the gloomy arches of Temple Bar, and issue into the Strand, where we saw two pickpockets, young, tall, gentlemanly men, cross the street from St. Clement’s Church and enter a restaurant. They were attired in a suit of superfine black cloth, cut in fashionable style. They entered an elegant dining-room, and probably sat down to costly viands and wines."

Phase 2

No. 19, Answers to Correspondents