Cathedral Square.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20103, 5 December 1930, Page 14

Cathedral Square.

The reported agreement between representatives of the City Council and the Tramway Board about shelters in the Sriuare will put most people out of f.iticnce. The proposal is to put one shelter north of the Godley site and another south; to build these shelters, octagonal in shape, out of Halswell stone faced with Oamaru stone; and to apportion the cost between the two bodies. AH that needs to be said about this can be said quite briefly. The Council, in the first place, will be wise to withdraw as fast as it can. There is no reason at all v. hy it should connive with the Tramway Board to build shelters anywhere. To plan and design them with the Board is misdirected zeal; and to help to pay for them would be generosity r m mad. Second, these octagonal stone fortresses are quite intolerable. No degree of architectural skill can accommodate to the Square two tubby little buildings, whatever they are made c::. The attempt to make them ornamental could only make them appear more conspicuously out of place and more conspicuously what they must be, two dumps of masonry. The Square, though members of the Council and of the Board have failed and still fail to realise it, is not the place for monumental feats of architecture, and they will not be accepted by the people. 'I he Board's obstinate intention of b.aiding shelters in the Square, with the officious help of the Council, is ot course supported by no better reason than its being unable to get out of the habit of thinking of tho Square as a tram ;fcition and shunting yard. If there wv-e no shelter, and the Board leai-rangAl its stopping-places, the tram-using public would very quickly and without inconvenience learn new h:ibits; but the Board's thinking is as rigid as its own rails. If it had any 11-xibility, any aptitude for meeting new conditions, any willingness to learn, it might have suggested any one of half a dozen possible experiments, end the public would have been glad to assent. But all it can manage, heavily supported by some Councillors, is two perdurable block-houses; and the public will not assent.