Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1881-10-06
HISTORIC HOUSES In HOLBORN.
Hay Is To he Demolished aud Others
that Already Have Been.

Nhus Already nave beeu.
There must be no shedding of false
sentiment over the demolition of the
house III High Holborn in which tenn
porarily sojourned the noble musician.
Franz Joseph Haydn. 1t seems GER
tam that he wrote his six symphonies
here for the Hanover square concerts,
and he may have noted down his first
ideas of the Creation" in his Holborn
lodgings; but il was at his villa in the
suburbs OF Vienna that he completed
his immortal work. For the rest,
though historic houses are plentiful in
Holborn, the fact can not be allowed to
interfere with the clearing of new sites.
Indeed, that lengthy thoroughfare has
been undergoing n chronic course OF
demolition and reconstruction for more
than q hundred years. Within the
memory of not very elderly persons
the Holborn valley has been entirely
laid out anew, and bridgcd by one of
the finest viaducts in the world: Hol-
born bars and the unseemly Middle
row Aave been swept away; the Inns
| of Courts hotel has been built, the
southern extremity Of Gray's inn-lane
wldened and the towering new premises
OF an insurance office erected eastward
of 'the Lane" Nor must it be for
gotten that the predecessor Of the
plain structure called Furnivars inn,
between Brooke street and Leather
lane, was an ancient mansion which
once the town house of the Lords Fur
nval, became an inn of chancerv, and
rs such was rebuilt in the reign of
Charles |. There was magnificent
facade toward Holborn, de igned by
lingo Jones; but this at the beginning
OF the present century had become
desperately ruinous, the Legal society
of Furnivals inn was disestablished,
and Mr.. Peto, the contractor, obtain.
ing lease of the premises, pulled
down the facade without and the fine
gothic hall within, and built the present
quadrangle, surrounded on three sides
by chambers, with commodious hotel
on the fourth.
Ere long another obsolete inn OF
chancery, Barnard's inn, on theasouth
side of Holborn, viii probably be pulled
down and its area leased in eligible
building lots; nor, perhaps, in few
years time, will the fine old Tudor
gables of Staple inn preserve that ven,
cradle legal hosiery from destruction
Only very recently most picturesque
block of sixteenth-century houses ir
Gray's Inn lane was demolished for the
building of the Holborn town hall
Sentimentalists may sigh but this con
tmuous sweeping away of the struc
lures of the past-when they interior,
with the comfort or convenience of the
PRESENTS matter of absolute neces
: sity. Holborn, although it contained
in the middle ages some very stated,
mansions, the property of the noblit,
or of the plelacy, was, unit a compare
lively modern period, one of the mos
disparaged and least cared for of on
: main thoroughfares. 1t had long pos
sessed unenviabe notoriety as the higl
road to Tyburn, and few people chos
to build comely houses or open hand
some shops along the "Via Dolorosa,
, which began at ST. Sepulchre's, by New
gate, and ended at st. Giles pound
and was traversed, on most Monda,
mornings in the year, by the carts, witt
the doomed wretch in it sitting on hr
coffin. The ancient Malefactors' WAY
is now rapidly becoming one of tn,
handsomest streets in Europe, and tn,
statelness Of its edifices should be con
siderably enhanced by the First Avenu,
hotel.-London Daily Telegraph.