HUB OF THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 267, 10 November 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

HUB OF THE WORLD.

PICCADILLY CIRCUS.

rcrHNING POINT IN ITS CAKEER GIVING IT A- UNITY. ■•:.'• Completion of; the . famous quadrant in Eegent Street lias made a proWem of Piccadilly' Circus.' 'Tie'"liul) of ;the world," as tie. famous circus is known •to all Londoners, las: now been •rebuilt on its west side, where the quadrant and Piccadilly enter it, but the jumble of its east' side still survives. Sir Eeginald Blonifield is the architect who is responsible for the fine new buildings on the west side and the London County Council is being urged to have h' complete the new circus by drawing plans to which the unregenerate east side can in time be rebuilt.

There is no hope of being able to maks of the new' circus what Paris ha 3 made of the .Place de l'Opera. London's rather dingy opera aiouse is likely ,to remain in-Cbvent Garden, surrounded •by the sounds and smells of a fruit and vegetable market. 'It is hoped, however, that provision, will be made without delay for giving . Piccadilly Circus a unity that it woefully lacks to-day and an architectural treatment more nearly worthy of its great | prestige. .

It was bound to'come, for. the original circus has long been lost. •' A. circus is a round place at the- intersection of streets, and the small original circus at the intersection of "Pccadilly and Lower Eegent Street now forms only one corner of the great triangle that is customarilyreferred to as Piccadilly- Circus. Nor is the present triangle more . than a step .toward the even larger Piccadilly Circus of the future. ' It is universally assumed that the future Piccadilly Circus will be a rectangle formed ;by carrying the line of the north' side of the quadrant straight to Shaftesbury ■ Avenue and cutting away most of the triangular island site on which the Pavilion Theatre now stands... This setting back and- rebuilding of the' east side will be. the next and perhaps the final step in the evolution of Piccadilly Circus. A Rectangular Circus. The sites on which Sir Eeginald Blonifield has been rebuilding on the west side are Crown property, while most of the sites on the east side belong to the London County Council. He has already put into drawings his ideas for the large rectangular circus of the future, rebuilding the east side to the architectural ideas employed on the west side and making of the future circus a dignified architectural unity. He believes, indeed, that the' famous quadrant in Eegent Street could find an answer in a similar quadrantal curve at the foot of Shaftesbury Avenue. Nash's old quadrant in Eegent Street has, of course, entirely disappeared. Modern site values and traffic considerations have banished Nash and all his ideas.