Snap Ploni for Mr. Brooke
By BERNARD LEVIN THE grapevine had been saying for some time that the Minister of Housing, Mr. Henry Brooke, would give Mr. Jack Cotton and the Legal and General Assur- ance Society permission to put up their monster in Piccadilly Circus, though he might insist on a few comparatively trivial alterations first. As usual, the grapevine was wrong, and it is with a feeling of deep relief that I have been reading the lengthy and detailed report of the Ministry Inspector, Mr. C. D. Buchanan, on the public inquiry held into the scheme, and the Minister's decision based on that report. For not only has the Monster of Piccadilly Circus been conquered; it has been beaten with the right weapons and for the right reasons. I think it is worth going into this end of the affair in some detail, if only because there is an ominous passage in Mr. Brooke's announce- ment (though one which he could hardly, in the circumstances, have omitted) in which he invites the prospective developers to try again, and there is no evidence that I can see that the next scheme they submit will be any better, though I presume it will be a different shape.
For two most alarming facts emerge from the report. The first is that if it had not been for Mr. Cotton's over-confident action in calling the press conference at which he showed the photo- graphs that finally gave the game away, 'it is a fair guess,' as Mr. Buchanan puts it, 'that the building would now be in course of erection.' The outcry which followed Mr. Cotton's revela- tion of exactly what it was that he proposed to do to and in Piccadilly Circus (an outcry in which I am happy to recall the Spectator joined at the top of my lungs) made much of the singularly idiotic imaginary advertising slogan with which Mr. Cotton's designer (we will come to hint' in a minute) had seen Ot to decorate the model of the proposed building. But there must be something badly wrong with our town planning methods if a monstrosity of this kind has to be labelled 'Snap plom for vigour' before anybody can summon up the energy to prevent its being built. Of course, by the time Mr. Cotton held his fateful press conference the London County Council was so deeply committed to the pretence that this thing was a worthy addition to the architecture of Piccadilly Circus that they could hardly have started criticising it; and the tortuous and dis- quieting series of steps by which they had become so committed I went into in exhaustive and mercifully unsummarisable detail last December. Nevertheless. we have only to look around Lon- don to see some of the muck being put up at this moment by people too canny to hold press conferences before permission is finally in the bag; every day that passes on the South Bank, for instance, deepens and extends the horror of the thing being erected there, yet by the time we realised just what was being done there it was, far too late for anything but a very large quan- tity of dynamite to do any good. It is obviously impossible to refer every proposed new building, even every major new building, to the Royal Fine Art Commission, and the Commission's alternatively lackadaisical and frenzied activity in this case gives one little confidence that it would do much good if such a course were pos- sible; but I would feel a lot happier if some method less haphazard than the fluctuating inter- est of the newspapers in town-planning could be devised for preventing eyesores being erected on sites of national importance.
The second, and even more disturbing fact that emerges clearly from Mr. Buchanan's report (it was beginning to emerge from the evidence at the inquiry itself) is that nobody in fact designed the Monster at all. We know the name of the firm responsible—Messrs. Cotton, Ballard & Blow—and we know also that Mr. Frank Booth was called in as consultant architect for the eleva- tions as late as March, 1958. We know, too, that Mr. Bennett, Architect to the London County Council, had suggestions to make after the initial plans were submitted, and thereafter kept in close touch with the developers. But there the trail disappears into the sand. Mr. Bennett was at some pains during the inquiry to deny that he had designed the Monster (as well he might have been), and no person, or group of people, was willing to admit fatherhood of the puking babe, or to accuse anybody else of the offence.
'And Ii.hy Jo YOU thinis the Minister has rejected !he phut for r( -building Piccadilly?' It seems strange, and worse than strange, that' building 172 feet high, of almost uniquely hideous aspect, covered with slabs of adverti011 visible over huge distances, could be subrnill° and approved for building in Piccadilly Circa' without anybody knowing who actually desiga° it. (It is true that we do not know the name °' the architect who designed Salisbury Cathedral But I doubt if Mr. Cotton would maintain 03: the Monster of Piccadilly Circus was desigivJ for the greater glory of God.) Still, a victory over ugliness, shoddiness ant incompetence has been gained. And credit nliat go in the first instance where the responsibilitl lies in the last—to Mr. Brooke. The momentum generated by a scheme which had got as far aS the Monster, and the gigantic amounts of monel involved, must have been very great indeed; and for Mr. Brooke to have resisted it, and come I° a decision on the architectural grounds alone. very greatly to his credit.
Particularly, as I say, since he has not col] rejected it, but rejected it for the right reason' The appearance of the building he dn'e declares 'would fall below the high standard which public opinion is entitled to expect c important site' (he might, as a matter of fact have expressed this better; even the temperate and sober Mr. Buchanan was moved to describe the eastern and northern sides of the Circus 34 'an architectural shambles of old and ill-assorted buildings on cramped and awkward sites'); the advertisements would be too dominant in the Circus and too visible over a distance; that the car-parking facilities are not satisfactory (as fat as I know, only the Commissioner of Police 01 myself attached proper weight to the failure af Mr. Cotton's designers to provide adequate part" ing facilities for the increased traffic that building would attract, and the obviously on: satisfactory juggling with the spare floors 01 Moon's Garage in Denman Street that the 1-01' don County Council had accepted); that the design would fail to give a sense of enclosure t° the northern side of the Circus; and that it met well prejudice the best solution of the problem` of pedestrian and vehicular circulation in the area.
What is more, Mr. Brooke went on to 1:° down positive, as well as negative, reasons for his decision. He stresses that a horizontal build" ing would be better in principle for the site (indeed it would; and a very handsome horizontal building there is on it in the London Count) Council's own comprehensive scheme for Circus, a scheme which they had abandoned before the inquiry hegan, but which they there maintained still existed and would not be preiil" diced by Mr. Cotton's building); that the adyer' tising panels should be subservient to the design of the building (in Mr. Cotton's plan they Were virtually its raison d'etre); that the Circus should be planned as a comprehensive unit; and that • the idea of raised pedestrian walkways should not be abandoned. 'Finally,' says Dame EvelYn Sharp's covering letter to the interested parties' setting out the Minister's decision, 'he is clear that any new building on this important site, if it is to be acceptable, must not only meet the technical requirements of the site and the Circus but must be :esthetically pleasing also.'
All of which is highly gratifying to those
of us
who laboured in the fields in the heat of the day. But we are still a very long way from a comprehensively planned, intelligently designed and actually built Piccadilly Circus. What is more, with the present London County Council, smarting under the defeat that the rejection of Mr. Cotton's plan must imply for them, it is likely to be a very long time before we start get- ting any closer. The shabby series of compro- mises and retreats from an initial plan that has allowed the South Bank to become what it has become is typical of the social cowardice, lack of foresight and stupidity that permeates County Hall under the reign of the limpet-fast Sir Isaac Hayward. 1 suggested when I examined the Picca- dilly Circus affair before the inquiry that if Mr. Cotton's scheme was rejected it might be possible for the Council itself to acquire the Monico site, which would enable it to start on a comprehen- sive scheme on that side of the Circus before 1965, when the London Pavilion site lease falls M. thus enabling them to acquire that one. But
now I am by no means sure that it would do any good if the Council owned every square inch of the Circus and the land for five miles around in every direction. The obstinacy with which they have refused to countenance the principle of first-floor walkways, for instance, ever since one or two of the commercial interests involved fired a whiff of grape-shot over their heads, and the way in which they abandoned their compre- hensive scheme entirely, while at the same time pretending that it still existed and that it was never a definite scheme anyway, is evidence of the kind of spirit with which we could expect the London County Council to approach this problem now. Is it possible, it occurs to me, to take the thing out of their hands entirely? A national competition for the site, followed by a special Act of Parliament to enable the whole area to be built as a national operation? The problems. legal, financial, architectural, legisla- tive, would be enormously complex and enor- mously expensive. So was Blue Streak.
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