USE AND ORNAMENT

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 102, 27 October 1914, Page 6

USE AND ORNAMENT

Several members of Parliament have questioned whether a sum of £40,000, as proposed by the Government, will provide a suitable railway station building for either Wellington or Auckland. The expenditure at each city for a new station (to include yards and complete equipment) ig to be about £400,000, but the Minister (the Hon. W. H. Herries) has offered an opinion that a tenth of the total will be enough for the principal building. Presumably he has given a Departmental estimate, which The Post is not prepared to question at present. We do not know that £40,000 will be sufficient for the needs of Wellington city and province, but we do know that tho community as a whole does not desire a lavish outlay on florid ornamentation. The people will look for a useful station, which will not pretend to be a "palace" by wearing a fantastic mask of stucco, wrought into queer shapes which the southerlies would soon fret. Such a building can have its own good appearance, in accordance with the principles of sane architecture. May there be no unnecessary stucco! May there be no mock-marble, no mud-like mimicry of classic or symbolic figures ! Wellington has already far more than enough of those cheap plasterings and figurings on both ' private and public buildings, and that drabness and that barbaric flouting of the elementary canons of simple art are painful to numbers of people — especially visitors from the Old World. Wellington's station can be one to serve its purpose well, and this end can be achieved with a building, of moderate cost, which should not seem mean and shabby and ill at ease by contrast with the new architecture that will appear near the station in time. Tho designers have to project their minds some decades forward, and they have to ¦'consider the possible character of buildings on land in that locality. Thoughtful Wellington citizens, who have foresight for their city, should study the sketch plans in Mr. Hiley's report. This is a time when people of New Zealand have to recognise that money cannot be spared to gratify the mistaken vanity of any section. This country has witnessed the rivalry of minor towns with Courthouses, chiming post oflßoes, railway stations, and other things which have given scope for stucco (in various shades). New Zealand is "overtowned" — and this indisputable truth is one factor in the cost of living. Some small towns, which in themselves are unquestionably burdensome to New Zealand as a whole, have a. different opinion, and they clamour for public buildings to fit their estimate of their own importance. The old system of political control of public works did not discourage the foolish ambjtion of small towns to appear imposing — and the traveller may see some shocking monuments to that regime — buildings of an indescribable style and flourish, which seem almost to exclaim painfully to the ear as well as to assail the eye. The people yearned for something out of the common — and they were not disappointed ; that feeling is for the stranger — and no doubt for a few townsmen who suffer by the majority's craze for distinction, at the sacrifice of true art, which is never luridly obtrusive (except when such a purpose is deliberate). A gi;eat, immeasurable improvement can be made on the style of some of those monstrosities — and money can be saved at the same time.