The Bank, so familiar to Londoners, is now being rebuilt.
Its details are well recorded in the fascinating quarto of photographs and plans, with a short historical sketch, prepared by Mr. H. Rooksby Steele and Mr. F. R. Yerbury, and entitled The Old Bank of England, London (Beim, 42s.). Sampson erected the first Bank • building in 1782-84 in Threadneedle Street. Robert Taylor, the architect of Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, added much to the Bank by 1788, when Soane began his long and glorious reign. C. R. Cockerel' succeeded Soane in 1883, and finished the Bank as we have known it. The great island site had been acquired piecemeal through the century. The photographs remind us of the wealth of charming cietail in Soane's work, now almost all demolished, so that a loftier and larger structure may emerge. The authors say that Soane's commission averaged barely £1,000 a year
through his forty-five years of office. Masterpieces were cheap in his day.
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