Waterloo Bridge
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
TN 1832 the authorities of what was to be a capital -I- city, Budapest, had wistfully dreamed of bridging the Danube. They sent to- England as the foremost country in such construction and discovered there William Timmy Clark, who had been John Rennie's favourite assistant and had successfully solved the problems of suspension-spanning. Ile designed for them bridge which was considered a new wonder of the world. Shortly before the War it showed signs of weakening under modern traffic. It was strengthened by substituting, where necessary, steel for iron and timber without materially altering its appearance. " The citizens of Budapest hare always regarded their bridge as far too in a feature of the landscape and of the city to allow of its .destruction."
At the time these words were written our local county authorities were bent on destroying, quite needlessly, .Tiernay Clark's bridge at Great Marlow, and were only prevented from doing so on the ground of expense.
But the contrast between a foreign country's care for British constructive genius and our own for a superb monument of architectural and landscape beauty was to be more strikingly displayed. In 1923 John Rennie's masterpiece showed signs of settlement, not due to any fault in its own structure, more durable, in engineering opiniOn, than any substitute in steel, but to changes in the river bed which its designer could not have foreseen. The London County Council, having by ill-advised measures increased the settlement, determined, after two years' debate, to condemn Waterloo Bridge, and, with the intention of running an obsolescent tramway system into the Strand, embarked on the scheme of a new six-line-traffic structure.
A vote in Parliament had actually sanctioned, in 1920, -the financial provision for this, when a national protest succeeded in holding it up till the whole question of cross-river traffic had been examined. The result was to condemn the project as mistaken on grounds of traffic, to affirm the necessity of a new bridge at the effective point, Charing Cross, and to recommend, as a compromise, the widening of Waterloo Bridge by corbelling-out its roadway to take four lines of traffic, after strengthening its foundations by measures whose feasibility not even the engineers of the Council could deny.
The County Council -bad hastened the proceedings of the Royal Commission on the ground that the bridge was in danger of falling down, but, instead of at once proceeding to reinstatement, have left it to its supposed fate for over five years. Now that the Charing Cross project has temporarily been suspended, they repeat the story, of its precarious condition, revive their dis- credited scheme, and have induced the Government to transfer its subvention, less fifteen per cent., to a new bridge in the wrong place.
It is argued on their behalf, in contradiction with an
R. Wilson,-M.T.C.E., " The Philosopher's Bridge," in " Art- work," Vol. V-, No, 18. 1920. has set a marginal limit of 10 to 15 per cent, for an excess, earlier attitude, that Waterloo Bridge is not so beautiful as to call for the sacrifice of a fixed idea. Against them is the whole architectural profession in England, and its leaders in France, who signed a protest when visiting London, not to speak of artists and lovers of London generally. In favour of the Council's view the authorities relied upon arc Mr. Herbert Morrison and Ruskin. Now. Ruskin is constantly the victim of imperfect quotation, and the last offender was Lord Ponsonby in the House of Lords debate. The facts are these. Ituskin's early, instinctive reaction was to call Waterloo Bridge :
"The finest bridge in all the City."
Later, he raised the theoretic objection that the slope should have been thrown not into the approach, but into the bridge itself. Imagine the hump this would have meant ! In the passage quoted he was criticizing the Embankment and the bridge for the absence of sculpture, but he began by saying that the arch over the Embank- ment was as vast in its sweep as the Rialto, " and scarcely less seemly in proportions." Living architects, the Council's advocates go on to say, are capable of as good a design. Elsewhere, possibly : but here, demonstrably, 'not ; because the width of the new spans in conjunction with their height must be inferior in shape, a slum if eased in stone, and damaging in scale to the other elements in the composition, Somerset House and St. Paul's. The only point of substance in their case is the mutilation involved in corbelling out. That compromise is regret- table, but it would not affect the main elements in the design.
So much for aesthetics. Hopeless of rousing any echo of the Budapest temper in our rulers, the defenders of the bridge have pressed the traffic argument and received no answer ; so wide a bridge without clearances is worse than useless, and the immensely costly clearance of the approach is neither provided for nor in sight. No general plan for the future has been drawn up to justify what in its absence is a shortsighted and wrong-headed folly. As it is, Waterloo Bridge is avoided and partly disused because of the congestion in the Strand. Are trains, in face of all denials, still the secret motive ? They would reduce the general traffic space from six lines to four.
Against this blank wall of unreason a general protest has again been signed, at short notice, by a number of representative names, a handful out of the thousands which might be collected. Unfortunately, few of our leading statesmen, such as signed the curlier manifesto, are now en disponibilite. Profuse in platform declarations of devotion to art and amenity, in office they become in- different. There remains, however, one tender point in their armour, the financial. The County Council has put forward an estimate for demolition and rebuilding which, for those conversant with such operations, appears to be wildly optimistic ; it is doubtful whether they have any real conception of what they are in for. The Government has promised to supply, from the Road Fund, sixty per
cent. of the sum named, and the Minister of Transport In view of recent experience—the excess over estimate of £1,500,000 in the case of the Mersey Tunnel, of £2,000,000 in that of the Sydney Harbour Bridge—can Ministers feel any assurance that the ultimate cost for the uncompleted plans and unforeseen contingencies of a difficult and for- midable series of works will be anything like what has been assumed ?
Against such megalomania stands the plan for under-.•
pinning and widening the existing bridge at a moderate cost as estimated by competent engineers and endorsed by responsible contractors ; the avoidance of closing for years the road service of Waterloo Bridge above and obstructing the river service below ; the avoidance, above all, of a shaMe to the governors of London and of our country by a wanton obliteration of history and beauty.
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