LONDON BEAUTIFUL.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17748, 27 April 1923, Page 11

LONDON BEAUTIFUL.

(yaoii oun own coerbspokdktt.), LONDON, March 17. Sir Aston Webb remarked io the members of the London society that a matter of much concern to the Metropolis was the possibility of founding s, Commission of Fine Arts, mainly composed of exports, to act as a purely! advisory body on large public improvements. The Earl of Crawford (late First Commissioner of Works) took up the matter very heartily, and was about to bring it before his colleagues when the Government went now they had to begin all over again. The scheme had been in ivogue m the United States for some time, andj&e Office of Works had been informed that it had proved of very great use. They were also anxious to suggestive plan for the future enlargement of Lcf.idon, believing that it would have a great effect on the authorities who controlled those matters. Their plan would show notlonly t/he roada but also where residences wore likely to extend, and the open spaces that ought to be secured. Smoke abatement was another reform that must be effected before they could haive a beautiful London, and as three-fourths of the smoke came from the domestic grate, he hoped that smokeless fuel would become a commercial product, and that London might have the atmosphere it enjoyed during the coal strike. He deplored the proposal _ to erect buildings 120 ft high in 6treeta that were 25ft wide. The Society was trying to interest Londoners in London, to keep her beautiful parks, and to make those less beautiful more eo. Mr Harold Cox said that when he was in New York fifteen months ago he was appalled? by the scraper buildings. It was true that some of the architects did put a beautiful finishing- touch to the upper storeys of some of those gigantic buildings, but the whole principle was wrong, and it was unfortunate that a movement was on foot to nrlvocate "them for London. The population of London proper was greater than that cf Australia, and that of Greater London larger than that of the whole of Canada. There was a clear case for industrial decentralisation. either to the rural areas of England or to the unpopulated territories of the Empire.