£6,500,000 SITE WASTED.

Bush Advocate, Volume XIX, Issue 737, 10 June 1907, Page 7

£6,500,000 SITE WASTED.

—j as. — afr Is the Bank of Engta.;.! run oi business ]ines! J (asks the Daily I>. x press. >! To those unfamiliar witl the world of finance the question seems to be a piece of wild heresy. Yet there is a growing volume ot opinon in the City that the Empire's greatest bank is as much behind the times as some of our Government Departments. It wastes the value ol the richest site in the Biitisli Empire. If it utilised the wonderful value of this site it could put in its coffers each year from that source alone any sum between £250,000 and £500,000. A seven storey building would give the bank all the space it occupies at present, and leave a plot of land worth many millions sterling. Reckoning its value at £50 per square foot, it has been computed that the bank site is worth £6,534,000. And yet tli is wonderful piece of ground is occupied by a one-storey building which is architectural incoherence itself, if we reckon the large garden, courtyards, and interminable galleries and passages apparently leading to nowhere in particular. The bank was completed in 1788, when the land in and about the Mansion House was worth scarcely more than £5 a square foot.