The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-11 00:00:00

Metropolitan Improvements.

Among the mass of private bills that await the
consideration of the new Parliament there is a small
percentage which are not brought forward for the
purpose of still further cutting up the metropolis
with railways, but are on the contrary intended to
improve it. The Board of Works has taken the
field with renewed energy. Middle-row, Holborn,
is to be removed, the Burdett-road, Finsbury, the
Commercial-road, Whitechapel, the High-street,
Kensington, are all to be improved. Park-lane will
cease to be a standing reproach to the Board, for it
is to be widened to an extent that will not only ac-
commodate its traffic, but make it one of the finest
main thoroughfares in London. The new street to
the Mansion-house is to be proceeded with. Two
new and magnificent approaches are to be made to
the Thames Embankment—one passing over the site
of Northumberland-house, and giving a wide pros-
pect from the corner of the Haymarket right across
the river; the other, equally spacious, from the cor-
ner of Wellington-street on to the embankment at
the foot of Cecil-street. A magnificent crescent is
to be built along the embankment stretching from
liungerford to Waterloo-bridge. Preliminary steps
are to be taken for embanking the south side of the
Thames, and on the north the embankment is to be
continued from what is called " Mr. Cubbitt's road"
up to Chelsea.
This makes a very fair list of improvements, and
above all of improvements that are most urgently
needed. 'The Board of Works are evidently deter-
mined to maintain the reputation they have justly
earned. If they cannot make London beautiful in
the Continental sense of the word, they are at least
bent on making it more habitable and convenient,
on facilitating the passage of its enormous traffic,
and by wider and straighter streets bringing its al-
most unmanageable distances more under control.
What they have already done they have done well,
and, as what they have donewhat at the outset they
intended to do, the promise of these announced im-
provements comes upon us in a more hopeful form
than the dim visions in which the ideas of metropo-
litan improvements used to flicker before the con-
stitution of the Board. Already we have one fine
new street, many are improved by better lighting,
all have been properly numbered and clearly named.
The main drainage system is complete, with the
exception of the short link of low level sewer
which is to run under the Thames Embank-
ment and the Embankment Railway ; and, the
greatest and most important of all, the drainage
pumping stations will be begun next week. As it
is, however, all except about one-eighth of London's
refuse is now conveyed far away—a fact which any
-one who travels by water between Barking and
Crossness Point will discover. The great embank-
ment, too, is fast progressing. The foundations are
laid at Westminster, and the granite facing is
begun. Part of the parapet has been fixed near
Temple-gardens, all along the line of works be-
tween these two points the river has been dammed
out, the slime and refuse cleared away, the concrete
poured in, and the filling up of earth begun.

Since the first conception of this great work many
improvements have been made upon its original de-
sign, and none greater than those of its northern
approaches, which the Board of Works are now
applying to Parliament for powers to carry out.
The most important of these is the alteration which
is to be effected by the removal of no less a building
than our old friend, Northumberland-house." This
new thoroughfare will be a continuation in a per-
fectly straight line of Cockspur-street, and passing
through the corner houses of Charing-cross, west of
Northumberland-house, removes part of the old
mansion itself, and traversing its gardens, North-
umberland-street and Percy wharf, comes out upon
the broad highway of the embankment, which at
this point will be about 300 ft. wide. The sweep of
the river makes the embankment at this place
wider than at any other part except east of Hunger-
ford-bridge, where it is upwards of 400 ft., and as
the 300 ft. below Northumberland-house will, of
course, not be all required for the roadway along
the embankment which will be uniformly of 80ft.
wide, a large clump of trees will be planted
here, but not so as to interfere with the fine view
down the new avenue across the river from Charing-
cross. The -width of this road is to be 80ft., and
on both sides the land will be occupied with fine
buildings, the ground-rents going far to repay the
cost of the thoroughfare, which will not exceed
f less
£190,000. At the bottom of this road a handsome
steamboat pier is to be built. Another road, but one
o
importance,shut in th though still of the same width,
is
to be made by
end removingofltvhheibtelohcalLopfldaicret,yand wharvesthus
which
giving another line of route to the embankment. A
third, though only of 40ft. width, will enter on the
river road from Villiers-street ; and the fourth, as
wide and handsome as that to be taken through
Northumberland-house, is to pass from the corner
of Wellington-street, through Savoy-street and a
crowd of little tenements and wharves, on to the
embankment at the foot of Cecil-street. Along all
these avenues the Board of Works retains the free-
hold and the power of dictating the stylewhich
the houses are to be built.
Between Hungerford and Waterloo bridges a space
of more than 400 ft. of dirty slime will be reclaimed
from the river by the embankment. Along this
whole spa,ceit is intended to build a crescent-shaped