No Piazza For Piccadilly

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30366, 15 February 1964, Page 23

No Piazza For Piccadilly

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter) LONDON. London's most romantic landmark, the winged figure of Eros, God of Love, which dominates Piccadilly Circus in the heart of the metropolis, will not be distur’oed after all. The Government has rejected a scheme to turn the circus into an Italian-style piazza, which means that the status will not be relegated. Young lovers who sit on the steps below Eros may be pleased. But property owners are annoyed that it has taken the Government a year to decide against the plan. Pedestrians are alarmed to hear the reason for its rejection—the fact that it could not cope with the anticipated 50 per cent increase in the volume of traffic. Motorists are equally horrified to imagine the kind of congestion that will result where six major roads converge, whatever the lay-out of the circus. Most Londoners are disappointed that the imaginative plan of architect and planner. Sir William Holford, is unlikely to get off the drawing board. The London County Council asked him to give Piccadilly Circus a completely new look when property and business tycoons started putting forwar dtheir own ideas in 1960 for a sky-scraper-encircled circus.

Sir William Holford’s dream was of a circus designed like an Italian piazza, turning

Piccadilly into a meeting, place and pleasure area, in-! stead of a nightmare circus j of traffic and pedestrians. He wanted to raise the cen- 1 tral area of the circus by ! between five and eight feet.! providing a deck for pedestrians. This deck would overlap a piazza overlooked by I coffee bars and restaurants, I with accommodation for mu-' sicians and dancers. Floodlighting and illumina-' tions would have added to the glamour, while the constant stream of traffic moved underneath. Subways and' escalators would cater for’ pedestrians. Eros would bel moved to hover above a j flower shop—encouraging the I sale of red roses. The £3O million plan also included a 300 ft tower, a skating rink and roof car ■ parks, as well as new shops | and offices. Even the architect John Nash, who originally created “the heart of London" more than 140 years ago would have been amazed by a plan for such vision. To ’him the circus provided the answer to a road-building snag and the gratification of a Royal whim. He pulled down hundreds of houses, whole streets and market places, to build the great thoroughfares crowned by Piccadilly. His plan, put into operation in 1813, permanently divided the streets j of the nobility and gentry on j the west from the commercial part of the community on the east. He drew the dividing!

line between Mayfair and i Soho. At the same time. Nash provided the Prince Regent.l later King George IV. with a view comparable to the! wide boulevards of Paris that! he longed for. Nash’s circus stood un-l changed for more than 60 1 years, and the last of this; work only disapparead in I 1927, when the final curved 1 shop front was sacrificed to! widen the road. Now the traffic has come! first again. The Minister of! Transport. Mr Ernest Marples.; has told the London County 1 Council that the pressure on I road space in central London ■ is increasing faster than expected, so that the plan, al-I ' though approved in principle, will have to be re-examined I i to provide more traffic capacity. I Mr Marples believes thatl ■ the stream of more than 56,000 vehicles which passed through the circus every 12 hours in 1960 and increased by 10. per cent by last year, will eventually become a flood of 85.000 vehicles. Because of this, Sir William Holford will probably be asked to make a drastic revision in his plan. He and his team of planners may be disappointed at this decision, but property owners in the circus are furious. Mr Jack Cotton’s scheme for redeveloping part of Pici cadilly by building a futuristic glass-fronted building | with a huge panel for electric I advertisements was rejected I three years ago. Mr Cotton

said then that his company has acquired more than 120 different interests in the site, but was suffering a loss of £3OOO a week because of the state of indecision. Recently his company bet/ came so exasperated with th<> delaj- that it decided to least its property for between foursto eight years. Many Londoners feel that* the Government’s decision means that in the battle for posession of the metropolis, fought between humans and vehicles, the humans can expect to lose and to go on i losing.