BAD STREET ANGLES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 7

BAD STREET ANGLES

BANISH THE SHARP CORNERS

VISIBILITY IN OUR CROWDED CITY,

(Contributed.) Even whero there is no likelihood of traffic congestion, it would be a bad lay-out that would give a town rectangular blocks, with buildings carried right up to street-line. In such a lay-out, every street intersection would produce a sharp corner with the minimum of visibility for anyone approaching the corner down either of the intersecting streets. Test the thing for yourself. Walk up U-ey street from the head of Queen's Wharf, and see how. much you can (or cannot), see down Featherston street, because of the sharp .corner of our "up-to-date" Post Office. )

Then walk up Willis street from Lambton quay towards the Mercer street intersection, and observe how soon you obtain an angle of view down Mercer street because of the flattening (sometimes called "sniping") of the Willis and Mercer streets corner. EASY ANGLES FOR BEAUTY AND TRAFFIC. If the flattening of corners is desirable generally, it i a doubly desirable in a aty of narrow streets and congested traffic. To vehicular traffic the best possible view round the corners of intersecting streets is most important. Visibility in Wellington's ■ streets I would be much better if private owners were less greedy and if public owners were less sleepy. When the Post Office was being built in Featherston street, one of- the oldest buildings in the city, just across the I street, presented the grace of a flattened corner. Yet the new public building went up on the old rectangular lines. . . , 6

This was a case in which a lesson might have been- learned even from Rip Van Winkle.

Where, the City Council owns corner blocks, it is civic policy to lease such ! sites.only on terms permitting buildings with flattened corners. Where the City" Council is ground landlord, it is, of course, in a stronger position than where the ground is private freehold, lo control building on privately-owned corners, municipal hand must necessarily be dipped in the municipal pocket—provided, of course, that the pri, vate owner does not recognise the advantage, public or private, of voluntarily rounding off' the corners of hie building. CORPORATION LEASEHOLD TERMS. .", ■ i City Council corner leases, when they ! expire, should be renewed only on terms consistent with bringing the buildings as soon as possible into line with traflio needs in the matter of visibility as i well as with general town-planning standards. Mutual consideration as between lessor and lessee may avoid hardship.

Some little time ago, a re-lease of an important city corner leasehold was granted' by the City Council without a stipulation as to the method of rebuilding. • ' ■

The existing building has a flattened corner. The corner is insufficiently reduced, but even this degree of flattening is absent in the plan for a new building, under which plan the lessee proposes to build right up to streetline. ' • ■ •

Recognising that the terms of the release were not all that they might have been, the civic authorities object to the plan, and propose that the rebuilding shall allow for a still more reduced corner than that now in existence. It is hoped that the parties will arrive at a mutually considerate settlement, and one consistent with the public interest.

■ Visibility in fast traffic streets has become so important to life and property that sharp corners may lie placed in the ,same category of backwardness as the sanitation of Bagdad when Ali Shar lived there. - ■ :