A Clean Sweep on the South Bank
The ancient truth that, when pain is occasioned by an ugly facade, certain people do not mind it because they are behind it, has for some years had a most striking demonstration on the banks of the Thames immediately above Waterloo Bridge. Persons so unfortu- nate or perverse as to find themselves in the stretch of desert on the South Bank between the bridge and County Hall have been compensated by the undoubted, if somewhat aseptic, charm of the new and simplified skyline on the other side of the river. And now the day is in sight when the occupants of Brettenham and Shell-Mex Houses, the Adelphi and the Savoy will have, in addition to comfort and convenience, a view from their windows which is not an offence. The ceremony which took place on Monday, when the first pile of a new Thames wall was driven in, began what Mr. Herbert Morrison rightly called a spring cleaning. The published models of the wall clearly show its affinity with the clean and heroic lines of the new Waterloo Bridge. It will be simple and grand, and when the railway bridge to Charing Cross is abolished it will be simpler and grander. Behind the wall will arise the buildings of the 1951 Exhibition, which will be the centre-piece of the Festival of Britain. It is becoming possible to envisage, on the open banks of the Thames, the core of a cleaner and brighter London. For many years it must be an isolated symbol rather than a characteristic area, but a symbol as appropriate to the future Britain as that which was offered by the Lord President when, in an act which must have given him personal as well as official satisfaction, he drove home the first pile of the new wall with blows from a very noisy and insistent pneumatic hammer.
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