THE STRAND.
IF it should occur to an essayist of the future to write a history of the Strand, he would find some curious material in the polite collisions between the London County Council and the Further Strand Improvement Committee. The persistence of the efforts of the Committee has only been equalled by the regularity with which the Council has rejected the Committee's suggestions. Five separate Memorials praying for the revision of the Council's scheme of building between Aldwych and the Strand have met with refusal, though the opinions of the memorialists could not be dismissed as lacking weight or distinction. The Committee had the support of the President of the Royal Academy and a large number of the greatest of British artists and architects. Among the corporate bodies who joined in their Memorials were the Royal Academy of Arts, the Institute of Bankers, the Surveyors' Institution, the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society, and the Society of Architects ' • and appeals to the Council to alter their plan were made by most of the important newspapers and the technical Press. The reasons given by the Council for their refusal must, it would be. supposed, have been complete and final. Whether they were so is a question which, fortunately, there is still time to examine.
A sixth Memorial has been presented by the Further Strand Improvement Committee to the newly elected County Council, and will, we hope, meet with a better fate than its predecessors. Let us try to set out once more the plan which the Council originally sanctioned,— a plan which the Council themselves have made even more unsatisfactory than it was at the beginning. When the buildings which stood between Clement's Inn and Welling- ton Street were pulled down, it was proposed to lay out for new • buildings a large crescent-shaped parcel of land; round the 'north of which runs Aldwych, opening into Kingsway, and along the south of which runs the Strand with St. Mary's Church standing opposite the inside curve of the crescent. Of this crescent the new Gaiety Theatre forms the western horn. That is a flue building, fronting boldly on Wellington Street, and pre- serving the line of the Strand unbroken. But the eastern horn is to be very different. The County Council propose to extend the horn as far to the south-east as can be managed in regard to the traffic. It is to be pushed out into the Strand between the churches of St. Mary and St. Clement Danes so as to use up every avail- able square foot for building, and leave as little open road-space as possible. On general grounds that is a bad plan, for what is wanted in London is more, not less, open road-space; we certainly did not add to the distinction or the convenience of the Metropolis when we narrowed into insignificance Shaftes- bury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. But. in this particular case there are extremely weighty objections to the County Council's plan apart from questions of open road-space. In the first place, by dragging the eastern horn so far to the south the Council will cut the northern line of the Strand into two pieces. The buildings which they propose to erect will jut out so far that it will not be possible to look down the Strand from the Law Courts further than St. Mary's, nor will it be possible at any point west of St. Mary's to see the Law Courts as they can now be seen. The view each way will be entirely blocked. But that is not the only objection. The position proposed for the eastern horn of the crescent will turn the traffic moving eastward from Wellington Street round a most awkward curve. When it has passed the corner of the crescent it will have to twist at a sharp angle to the northward in order to clear the Gladstone statue. Such a curve would be an unsatis- factory feature of any thoroughfare carrying heavy traffic ; on a road used increasingly by motor-omnibuses it would be positively. dangerous. Thirdly, an extremely strong objec- tion to the County Council scheme has been brought into existence by the Council itself. The aim of the Council in placing the Gladstone statue immediately at the west end of St. Clement Danes must surely have been to set it in a central position in a great thoroughfare. If the buildings are completed on the proposed scheme, the statue will be no longer in the centre of the thoroughfare. It will not be seen by passengers travelling eastward down the Strand until the corner of the crescent is nearly reached, and even then it will seem to stand to the side of the road. It will no longer command the Strand.
These three 'objections should surely be strong enough to induce the present Council to alter the original scheme, and if not to accept the proposal made by the Further Strand Improvement Committee, at least to adopt some other proposal which will have a. similar 'effect. The proposal of the Further Strand 'Improvement' Committee has at least the merit of simplicity. It is to shear, off part of the eastern horn as at present designed, and thus open the Strand from St. Mary's Church so as to carry on the line of the Gaiety Theatre buildings eastward. This would mean that the present vista of the Law Courts, St. Clement Danes, and St. Mary's would remain the same ; we should still be able to view the charming sequence of towers and pinnaeles'which is the beauty and the dis-' tinction of the great business thoroughfare of London. As to the traffic, the cabs and omnibuses would run absolutely. straight from St. Mary's Church to St. Clement Danes. Thirdly, the Gladstone statue would be in • full view of travellers going east., would stand, in fact, as the County Council surely meant it to stand, commanding the road on every side. All this reads simply enough, and would admittedly be simply enough done. What, then, have hitherto been the County Council's objections ? Appar- ently there is one only. It would cost too much. The loss of the ground-rents which might . be obtained by erecting buildings over what would otherwise be open road-space would be too great a sacrifice. If that is the only objection, it should surely be disposed of at once. In the first place, the ground-rents need not necessarily be lost., or need only be curtailed. The Estates Gazette of August 3rd makes the valuable suggestion that by erasing from the Council's plan a superfluous " spur " street cutting the crescent at its eastern end almost the same superficial area could be redeemed as would have to be sacrificed to keep the line of the buildings straight and the road open. But even if this ".spur " street were retained, what actually would be the: loss to the ratepayers ? Early in 1903 the Council estimated it at £350,000 ; in October of the same year they re-estimated it at £239,400. But Mr. Mark H. Judge, who is secretary of the Further Strand Improve- ment Committee, has given some excellent reasons in a. pamphlet just published to show that even this reduced. figure is far too high. He shows that the County Council valued the laud required for the alteration at 42 per cent. higher than the land which they have actually let for building purposes.
But the whole question ought not to centre on difficulties of money. It ought to be raised to a higher plane. It is, of course, a platitude that public bodies like the London County Council ought to be careful in spending the public's money, and ought through their Committees to examine with the most scrupulous care the precise cost of every detail of new works or buildings erected for the public benefit. But in designing, or rather redesigning, the great business thoroughfare of a city with the history of London they must think of something else besides ground- rents. They have to make a great road as well as to cover sites with buildings. The roadway must be as spacious and majestic as the buildings that line it must be noble and appropriate. Their first duty is to the symmetry and to the traditions of the Courts, the squares, the Colleges, and the churches which have stood for centuries along the Thames, rather than, beyond all other considerations, to the ratepayer's pocket. Lastly, of all possible buildings, none connected directly with Imperial affairs ought to be allowed to spoil the symmetry of the thoroughfare of the Empire's capital. The new buildings which will front on the Strand have been let to the Canadian • and Australian Governments. They are of national import- ance ; they ought to stand as well with the public as with the road. The London County Council have, in short, a unique opportunity. They are charged with the duty of • reconstructing part of a great national highway, and they have been able to consider the possibilities of a mistake which originally was none of their making, and which they can the more readily and openly avoid. Let them reflect that the mistake once made cannot be remedied, even though every Londoner clamoured at it and every visitor laughed at it. Such a blunder would stand as a perpetual reproach to the generation that allowed it. Most earnestly we trust that it will not be allowed.
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