Hallam Street was developed by the Dukes of Portland, who owned most of the eastern half of Marylebone in the 18th century. Twenty acres of Conduit Field began to be developed after the 1760s. Hallam Street was laid out in the 1770s – the southern section was Duke Street and the northern section had been Charlotte Street.

Many houses were turned into lodging houses, beginning in the 1830s, leading to a decline in the status of the street.

Little remains of the original developments of either Duke Street or Charlotte Street – Hallam Street is now mostly twentieth-century buildings, predominantly blocks of service flats – often single-bedroomed without kitchens but with basement restaurants and servants.