We have fabricated GaAs T‐shaped edge quantum wire (T‐QWR) structures by the cleaved edge overgrowth method. The geometries of the samples were designed in such a way that we can separately detect photoluminescence (PL) from T‐QWRs as well as two adjacent quantum wells (QWs) from spatially resolved PL measurements. Each PL peak is unambiguously assigned and analyzed to precisely determine the quantized energy of excitons in T‐QWRs and the adjacent QWs. Special care is made in the cleavage and the growth procedures to realize sharp and efficient PL from these structures. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.