Rebuilding the City
By GERARD FAY THERE has been such an increase in the speed of reconstruction in the City that the visitor can now really see something going on within the imaginary walls. East of St. Paul's the visitor should tread softly, for he is treading on a town-planning consultant's dreams,tut he will find plenty to marvel at. It is rather like one of the 'Secrets of Nature' films—the rebuilding which has been so slow for so long has suddenly speeded up, and you could swear you see the blocks of offices sprouting up before your very eyes.
Since the beginning of 1948 03.6m worth of licences have been granted in the City. A third of these have been Issued since January, 1954. That really is acceleration and although a building licence is not the same thing as a building, the delay between the issuing of the one and laying the founda- tions of the other is becoming less month by month. Where today's visitor can see builders' cranes so close to each other that Cannon Street looks like the Clyde, tomorrow's will be looking up at new blocks of offices. Before very long he will be able to gaze at the fourteenth storey of Bucklersbury House and wonder, perhaps, how long it may be before he has to throw his head even farther back to look at the 28th storey of some new City skyscraper. The ambitious Barbican Scheme would send up such towers; at present it is a scheme of known ingenuity untested against economics.
The busiest centres of City rebuilding at the moment are around Great Tower Street and Mincing Lane, by Guildhall (which is itself being put together again), between St. Paul's and the Bank of England, and on the north side of Fleet Street.
The City has never claimed to be, like some younger parts of London, any example of noble lay-out. It takes some pride in -having restored itself after the first great fire in more or less the same higgledy-piggledy shape it had before— ignoring the advice of Wren who would have made London something much more gracious and much less English. The City is no less inclined to Ignore most of the imaginative advice given in the Holford plan for rebuilding after the second great fire. The ambitious North Boundary Road which would have siphoned off unich through traffic has been pushed so far fnto the half-world of 'long term' ideas that it can safely be forgotten about. The double-decker Thames Street, the removal of Blackfriars and Ludgate Hill bridges, the shifting of a church, American-wise, to make room for a road have all been dropped. Perhaps it was an ill omen for the plan that it ever suggested moving the Mansion House. Anybody who – knows the City knows that George Dance's swaggering home for the most lordly of all Lord Mayors will remain where It is as-long as, say, the British cling to constitutional monarchy, There are other City prejudices which affect the rebuilding now going on. One of them is in favour of making money rather than losing it. This has contributed much to the City as a seat of power and makes it certain that every idea f4:4 change will be scrutinised shrewdly to see if it is likely tO pay. If not it stands little chance.
The North Boundary Road is gone, but some of its work untangling the traffic will be taken over by the new Route Eleven between Moorgate and Aldersgate, a City-inspired project which should begin to take shape before long. The road will be wide, it will have car parks beneath it and seem!, very likely to be the first example in London of a courageou9 attempt to throw off the chains which the internal combustion engine has forged for the traffic of large towns.
Thames Street has not been forgotten either. It will be nothing like as novel as Holford's plan, but it will make the important link at Blackfriars between the Victoria Embank4 ment and a through route eastward towards the docks.
The original scheme for replacing Ludgate Circus by Ludgate Square stands, more or less. But there is an important difference. There will still have to be a railway bridge. The cost of burrowing underground, except for civil defence put' poses, has become prohibitive nowadays, so London will have 'to remain saddled with the railway bridges across the Thamee which should never have been put there in the first place. The river might have proved as effective defence against the railway tracks as the great landlords of Bloomsbury and Marylebone did when they held fast on the line Gray's Inn Road—Edgware Road and saved us from having northern termini somewhere south of Oxford Street.
The problem of the bridge across Ludgate Hill has been solved to some extent, at least so far as appearances go. It will be in three arches instead of one, more graceful than the present single girder. The main axis of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill will pass under the centre arch, and this will remain the great processional route it now is between the City and Westminster (with the chance of some relief from return processions when the new Thames Street is ready). The square will have St. Bride's as its chief architectural feature and for the first time this masterpiece will be visible to passers-by as well as to pilgrims orrfo. lunchers in the Press Club.
A little further west it is possible to see a bit of the City changing its shape. Half way up Fetter Lane an office block is almost completed; beyond it the steel framework of another can be seen. Between them at the moment is nothing but an imaginary line. Presently, however, they will be connected by the new Fetter Lane, for the old one is to be cut off short and turned north-eastward so that its traffic can debouch into a properly planed Holborn Circus instead of holding up the flow in Holborn itself. Some big newspaper offices and the headquarters of a magazine cha0 are planned for the same area. Fleet Street, of course, has long been unable to hold all the printing factories which traditionally live th5re. Having burst its seams towards the river, at one point disturbing the Temple with the rumble of its presses, the newspaper industry is to extend its grip, already pretty well established in Shoe Lane and under the lee of the Record Office.
There are no plans worth speaking of for making once more a human habitation of the City. The idea appeals to City addicts who hate to think how a sleep almost as deep as death creeps over their beloved streets between five and six each night, leaving only the extremity of Fleet Street with any life in it. They think, these addicts, that it would be a good thing if some blocks of flats could be fitted in among the offices so that there could be some other population besides the caretakers and their families who almost alone inhabit the City. But here the ideal stumbles upon the llhancial reality. The ground has become too valuable to be lived on.
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