Park Square was part of a fashionable West End housing development, known as the Park Estates which was developed at the end of the eighteenth century for the upwardly mobile wealthy, to give them some distance from industry and the river, but within easy reach of the commercial centre. It was laid out from 1788, Somewhat grander dwellings were available in nearby Park Place. It featured a private garden square and a church, St Paul's, on the south side which offered exclusive pew and interment rights to the residents. In 1865 the square was the scene of the
Leeds dripping riot when one person died during protests about the imprisonment of a local woman for the theft of
dripping from her employer at 8 Park Square. However the initial aim of a purely residential area was not maintained when a large warehouse and cloth cutting works,
St Paul's House, was built in 1878 for ready-made mass production tailor
John Barran on St Paul's Street, with its rear aspect effectively taking up half the south side of the square. This was, however, in grand
Arabic-Saracenic style by architect
Thomas Ambler, and notable as the first planned and designed clothing factory. The building was modernised and converted to offices in 1977, with a new main entrance on Park Square South. It is now private flats: Park Square Residences. Number 9, Park Square East is Vicarage Chambers, being on the site of the former vicarage of St Paul's Church. For much of the 20th century a major feature was a bronze statue by
Alfred Drury (1895) of
Circe who changed the companions of
Odysseus into swine, shown around her feet. This is also Grade II listed, ==Former residents==