LAST OF THE OLD STRAND

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 52, 29 August 1925, Page 16

LAST OF THE OLD STRAND

A HISTORIC LONDON STREET.

Of all London's street^ ths Strand holds the tenderest memories, declares Marie Harrison in the "Daily Chronicle." It is the most famous, the most ■widely-loved street- in the world, and it is changing so rapidly that very soon it will be almost unrecognisable by those who once knew every inch of ite dear, intimate shabbiness. Already some of the more familiar landmarks have gone; bub it is not so much the absence of particular buildings that puzzles those .who long ago. made a friend of theStrand as the transition from a homely narrow street of cheap shops, flamboyant posters, and unconventional untidiness to a road of insisten formality. Tho Strand endeared itself to men and women of all races and of all classes because it was everyone's street. Jt was neither Eaet-end nor West-end, but a highway where the foreign visitor, the poor provincial tripper, the Londoner porn, and the artiatocrat were equally at home. In The Mall one might be in Berlin; Kingsway suggests a Paris boulevard; but the Strand was essentially London, a street pf flowergirls, great hotels, hurrying, eager . crowds, shops where all the world might buy cheap goods, And aoon its face will be altered for «ver.

It is a wistful pleasure to loiter in the Strand in these days of rapid changes, looking at the old familiar bits that still remain. The antiquarian cannot regret the passing of 6oma historical building more keenly than the Londoner who awaits the doom of tho last of the old street which must disappear in tho melancholy business of the "Strand widening." Tall houses with sinning new faces stand where one* were little kindly shops, so that the new Strand is already inhabited by the official rather than by the home atmosphere. In. the last of the Strand there, lingers the cheerful, unpretentious air in which few can be lonely for long.. Here are the cheap shops where the buyer is given tho deference due to princes, restaurants whose names have been known for so many years that it would seem they must always have existed, the narrow pavements with their joking, jostling crowds, polite because they are friendly. I like to stop at 55, Strand, for here the new ends and tho old begins. Up to this point you have seen on the left side as you walk westward from "Wellington street so much that is Unfamiliar that it is like coming home to find the further end of the dear street as you have always known it, still unwidenedj etill very shabby and dusty, lika a busy street in some comfortable provincial town. Let us walk often from Fleet street to Charing Crose, we who love London, looking not at the n&w glories, so cold, so imposing, so important architecturally, but at the ,old beloved street so that in our memories there will not quickly perish the picture of the last of the Strand.