The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-20
CHANGES IN LONDON
MODERIZING BUILDINGS
Scheme to Make the English Capital Out-Rival
 Paris.

Americans who have been in London
 before and who will visit us again this
 year-we already hear of record tours
 and millions spent-win marvel at the
 remarkable changes which have talk
 en place during the past F months.
 The old London, that London which
 existed in the time of Elizabeth, is no
 more. It has long since been swept
 away. A house here and there, in the
 temple, in the old city, in Chelsea and
 on the Surrey side of the river is the
 sum and substance of Elizabethan re-
 mainder. Even the Georgian houses are fast going into history and
 oblivion; and the hideous architectural
 deformities known as early Victorian
 houses, like the furniture and the
 clothes of the period, are so disliked that day by day brings Times revenge in the form of the housebreaker Tudor architecture seems to be the prevailing
 style of the revival of building. Fleet
 street, for instance, the heart and
 brain of the empire, has emerged in new clothes, new buildings many of them beautiful and all of them a thousand times more useful and decor ative than the hideous sign covered boxes that have withstood the cen turies without protest from an un- esthetic race. The one thing lacking to make London beautiful is a concerted of,a fpn d ties to consult, and the architects are hurried from pillar to post by ofIicious personages who have no idea of artis- tic effects and less inclination to con- slider the views of those who have Thus we have the spectacle of a mag niticent street building nearly complet- ed in Regent street ordered to be pull ed down again because it does not suit the scheme of someone in authority at one Of the half-dozen offices in control. The sculptors of London, who for many years have been more or less idle when they have not been engaged
 in busts or statues of Queen Victoria
 and the Prince consort, are now in high fettle because of the immense
 amount of work that has been put in their way. The example set by one
 architect in embellishing his building
 with statues and making the interior beautiful with sweeping stairways and fine friezes is followed by all the oth- CTS so that now there is perfect mania for decorating new buildings with the work of the foremost scup- tors; and the result is, of course, greatly to the advantage of London, which, when it is finally completed, will really be beautiful town
 There is scheme just now in the hands of the royal architectural soci- ety which, if 1t is ever realized, will make London far more than rival to Paris. It is nothing less ambitious than the complete capture of Charing Cross and it's adjacent territory for the purpose of making vast open space in the form of semicirele stretching from the Strand to Wellington street, to the river, and round to the farther corner of the national gallery. This means that Charing Cross station. which now occupies one of the best sites in London. is to be swept literally across the river to Waterloo station with which it is to be consolidated. Wellington street, which leads to Wa terloo bridge, is to be brought into. touch with the new Kingsway, the new street of theaters and hotel pal aces, Waterloo bridge and Charlng Cross bridge are to be turned into thoroughfares with shops on either side, like old London bridge, and they are to be the most amazingly attrac- tive bridges ever made. All the space taken up off the Strand now occupied by the station and the various hotels, which are becoming more or less old fashioned, so far as the exterior is is to be taken up by mar ble dreams! Poor old London! Even twenty years ago, when it's air was redolent with the fumes of the fried fish shops and the succulent cabbage there was a charm about the place which was indefinable yet irresistible. Was it because its exterior was so gloomy and so repellant and its in- terior so bright and homelike? It is no longer the same London. There are motor buses and elctric trans; and only yesterday I encountered a po- liceman who was far from ordinarily