London : Its Amenities and Necessities
y AST Sunday's papers contained an announcement
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that " a Million red herrings and a large quantity of sprats were lately destroyed in a fire at Lowestoft.' , Could there be a better epitome of Lord Lee's- admiiable Bridges Reporta document which places not only all London, but all 'Britain, here and overseas, under a deep debt of 'gratitude? Lord Lee, as he was bound to do, has laid great stress upon the physical necessities of London's traffic and the need for providing more bridges and better bridges to. carry the rush of foot passengers and vehicles across the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and Westminster Bridge. But, in spite of this recognition of the need for being practical, he has never for a moment forgotten that is is his duty to protect the amenities of London and to help to make her what she ought to be, and, indeed is, if only people realized it, the great world city of the future, whether for beauty, convenience, magnificence, or historic charm. Rome was the paramount city of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Venice held the diadem in the later Renaissance ; Paris in the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries. Now comes London as the city of cities.
To return to our million red herrings and quantities of sprats. The slaughter of red herrings by Lord Lee's scheme has been immediate and will prove to be pro- gressive. The first to go was that nightmare proposal, the St. Paul's Bridge. It is now but the shadow of a name. The next bogy to be slain was the dilemma that if Waterloo Bridge is left as it is it will be unable to do its work, and that if it is widened it will be spoiled !
The Report shows that by the ingenious and not necessarily ugly device of corbelling the bridge can be widened both for vehicular and foot passenger traffic. And here we may point out that anyone who is frightened by the word should look at some examples of corbelling in being. •Paris, in the Pont Neuf (close to Notre-Dame), shows how beautiful corbelling can be made, and Edinburgh and many other of our cities, north and south, take up the tale. Other red herrings are to be found in the fantastic schemes which ignore the essential needs of London and propose schemes for getting traffic across the river at its most congested section and then pouring it into an area which is contracted by the con-. figuration of the river on two sides, and on the other by the whirlpool of which the " Elephant and Castle " is . the vortex. The Report, never content with mere negation, meets these proposals with a bold, constructive proposal. It takes a spacious viaduct over Ludgate Hill, and throws a new road and railway bridge across the river at Charing Cross. This, if we understand the plan rightly, would leave the new double-decker. railway and vehicular bridge at Charing Cross to do its own work unimpeded and would divert a great deal of the south-hound traffic, which now tends to congest the corner of Wellington Street, and so to threaten Waterloo Bridge with an unnecessary and .injurious form of widening. An excellent precaution is to make. the Royal Fine Arts Commission the final arbiter', shOuld any danger of injury arise in the working out of the new schemes. At the same time, Lord Lee and his colleagues propose that a Central ,Traffic Authority shall be set up to co-ordinate and hannothze the various projects for making London safe, or indeed possible, for the transit of men and motors.
Leaving aside to-day the important questions of finance and navigation, we would point out the public need not be afraid that the Charing Cross Bridge will be ugly because it is to be a double decker. One of the most beautiful bridges, or rather aqueducts, the Pont du Gard at Nimes, has three tiers of arches. Our next suggestion is that when the proposals for new bridges above Westminster Bridge are carried out, the experiment of a bridge with houses on it should be tried if navigation allows it. Those houses, if laid out by a competent architect after the manner of London Bridge, ought to prove an admirable specula- tion. There is no reason why the rent of the houses and shops should not more than pay for the bridge. The upper parts of the houses would make delightful flats, or a hotel, or, again, they might make provision for some of the ever-growing departments of the Central Government or of the London County Council. We suggest that there could not be a better place for trying the experiment than on the site of the present Vauxhall Bridge. That bridge once served a very important purpose, but, as we all know, it is not now safe for anything but foot passengers. It must without delay be made capable of relieving the congestion to the west of Westminster Bridge. Also, we should make the other two new bridges, which are required between Putney Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge, self-supporting through the structures on them.
Another matter which in truth deserves the careful attention of the Bridges Commission, though only indirectly, is the disastrous proposal to lay waste all the beautiful squares and gardens surrounding the proposed Covent Garden site in Bloomsbury and to turn them into eligible building plots. If this were done, it might no doubt be difficult to prevent the scheme for placing the new Covent Garden where once the turf and the trees of the squares flourished. But nobody who cares for the question of London traffic can doubt that it would be a great misfortune to have Covent Garden placed at the spot now proposed for its rejuvenation. The new Covent Garden ought to be a great deal further north, and worked in conjunction with the three great northern railway stations. Covent Garden transplanted there would be a relief instead of a hindrance to London traffic. The last of our suggestions concerns Mr. A. M. Samuel's admirable scheme for making England better known to the world. He should specially point out what London has to offer. We must not forget that, though we all know and love London, half the United States, and perhaps the whole of the South American continent, believes that London is a grim, haughty and disregarding place which, instead of smiling, frowns upon visitors. We suggest, therefore, to Mr. Samuel that he should give ardent attention to the, popularizing of London. Let all Brazil and all New Spain know that London is waiting to receive them Taking the problem of London as a whole, we would say that the public must not be afraid of a big scheme and a bold scheme, such as Lord Lee's Commission has presented. It would be a terrible misfortune if, instead, the British people took up the attitude which they have often taken up before when there have been pro- posals for great public improvements, and should mutter, " They are sure to make an ugly mess of the whole thing. Yet it is bound to come, and therefore it is no use to fight against it. We must just let the matter alone as a dire necessity." What is wanted. is a .public n opinion which is not afraid—which does not suspect itself; or despair of the republics of architecture and engineering.
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