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Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 133, 5 June 1907, Page 8

(To the Editor.) gir—Citizen's thoughtful letter opens up a most important point. I have so far derived a considerable amount of amusement from dealing with the conduct of the Mayor and councillors in this matter of the flat-iron. I have not troubled myself about the manner in which the poll was taken. Now, however, as my attention has been directed to the matter, I shall go right to the root ot it.

I am in the meantime assuming that Citizen's statements are correct-. If they are so, and I have no reason to doubt them, we are brought face to face with, the fact that our City Councillors themselves decided upon the site. Alone they did it. The gentleman who' composed our City Council when the flat-iron was decided on, and who are still ou the body corporate, are intimately acquainted with a variety of subjects other than architecture, but would any one of them be trusted by any ordinary man to build him an up-to-date villa, except under proper professional supervision?

I shall briefly summarise the various commodities, businesses, etc, in %hich the city fathers are interested. . One. each: Beer and spirituous liquors, law, aerated waters, plumbing, wholesale grocery, butter boxes, grocery, drapery, frait, butchering; and three in contracting.

I do not know which of these I could choose if I wanted advice as to whether the worst site in Auckland is suitable for the purpose of carrying a. hundred thousand pound Town Hall or not! Yet these gentlemen have taken upon themselves, absolutely without any professional assistance, to say that the Greystreet wedge is fit to use for our chief municipal building. To realise the folly of this one has only to imagine that the sum of £100,000 is to be expended in machinery instead of in a uuilding. Proba/bly our councillors think that brick and mortar require no technical knowledge. The general effect of their incogitative conduct will shortly be on view in Queen-street, for by the time this letter appears I shall have completed to scale a contour model of the flat-iron. I think it will prove a shock, even to the tradesmen at and about the foot of Greystreet, for, if persisted in, it might drive business away from that locality. Such is the ridiculous shape of the allotment that the Grey Statue and a. telegraph pole almost obscure the end view of the building, and we don't want an agitation to remove the Grey Statue if we can avoid it.

There are "quite a few" good reasons against proceeding with this proposal. I must give. a few of them:—

1. The site is absolutely the worst'that could have been chosen.

2. The City Engineer has certified that W3 want £120,000 for putting our streets, which, at.present are In an atrocious condition—the worst in New Zealand—in perfect order.

3. The City Council thinks that £400,000 is required for a drainage scheme.

4. Forty-eight loads of "plaguey"' filth were taken out of one cellar in Queenstreet recently, and there are hundreds of tons more in other cellars, where it has been rotting for decades.

5. Auckland, for its size, is absolutely the filthiest town I know, and I have seen a few. I make this statement gravely and deliberately, and notwithstanding the fact that our present councillors have been in office two years, straining their eyesight at the gilded cupola on the pencil at the apex of the projected wedge of cheese, while they have been stumbling over muddy streets.

Recently, in dealing with that little understood disease, phlatianitis,* I said: "The patient neglects the ordinary offices with regard to maintaining the cleanliness of his person and his abode, but becomes possessed of most lofty and extravagant ideas of erecting great edifices of distorted shapes, which he persists in describing as things of beauty, instance, one may find the passages of his house and his furniture in the most disordered, dirty, and unbecoming state, and the patient scheming to build a castle, while the mortgagee is clamouring for the interest on the phlatianist's cottage." This was prophecy.

I was pleased to see Dr. Purdy's kind remarks about Dr. Ferguson's early recognition of the late cases of plagueThese graceful tributes from one professional man to another,are by no means frequent, but, while giving all credit where credit is due, I cannot help saying that I think it is rather a reflection on the medical men of Auckland that, so far as is known, none of them has made a-ny determined effort to locate and "lay" the bacillus of phlarfaanttis, a disease whicb grandees to dewdog TVg&Z^

and to prove most costly to the city. This duty should not be left entirely to laymen.

I am told tha.t when the question of purchasing the Grey-street,wedge came before the Council in 1884, or thereabouts. Councillor Devore strenuously opposed its purchase, on account of its bad shape and awkward levels. He moved against its being acquired, and vigorously opposed the transaction in every way, but was out-voted. Mr. Devore, the late Mr. Waddel, and three others then took the — for Auckland — unprecedented course of handing in a written protest against the misuse of public funds in acquiring so poor a site; but Mr. Devore is, and has been for many years, president of the Society of Arts, and even in those days his aesthetic ideas -were probably of such a nature that he was unable to appreciate the beauty in the noble curves and angles oi cheese-wedges and flat-irons.—l am, etc., ° P. A. VAILE. (♦Pronounced Flat-iron-eye-tK.j;