CITY BEAUTIFUL

Evening Post, Volume 105, Issue 4, 6 January 1928, Page 8

CITY BEAUTIFUL

IMPRESSIONS ABROAD HINTS FOR WELLINGTON THE ARCHITECT'S EYE Having travelled for some months in England, on the Continent, and in America with a professional eye always open for impressions of the best and most up-to-date methods in the planning and construction of cities and buildings, Mr. W. Gray Young, the architect, who returned yesterday from a trip abroad, had- some interesting #bservations to make when interviewed to-day. Mr. Young was much impressed with the modern developments that are taking place on town-planning lines in many cities of the Old and the Now World. He said he found that all the big cities were discussing, and planning, f civie centres. If schemes were not actually under way, they were being prepared. The large provincial towns in England had schemes in hand; San Francisco had adopted a plan; in Los Angeles millions of dollars were being spent in making a civic centre; and in Vancouver the authorities were engaged in a discussion as to where the civic centre should be situated, and how it should be laid out. CIVIC CENTRE MUST COME. "A civic centre has got to come in Wellington," said Mr. Young, "and the sooner the question is tackled the better it will-be for the city, both from the point of view of improvement and the cost of the work. If the City Council d'eided now where the civic centre should bo located and how it should be laid out, it need not necessarily be started at once, but preparations could be made for the plans to be given effect to, and works in the vicinity in the meantime' could be carried out accordingly." LACK OF TREES SHELTER. Another thing which was very noticeable to the citizen who returned to Wellington after a visit abroad, he remarked, was the lack of trees in the city and suburbs, for in nearly all of tho big cities at Home, on the Continent, and in the United States, trees were' growing freely not only in the residential areas but in the. business parts of the city. It certainly did add great interest and colour to the streets. He had been struck in the Continental cities, and particularly in London, with the fact that where there were open Bpaces in which trees were growing there were found the women and children. So far as Wellington was concerned, if a mother wanted to take her young children out on a fine day, she must cither swelter in the sun at Oriental Bay or on one of the beaches, or .go to the ends of the suburbs to gain cool shelter. In the large cities he had visited while abroad there was plenty of cover from the ,heat of the sun. The visitor to London was struck with the amount of shady open space in the heart of the city. Not only were there the big breathingspaces, such as Hyde Park, etc., but between them, at convenient distances, were small squares. "It occurred to me," said Mr. Young, "that If the City Council had a town plan developed there is no reason why they should not, in some of the poorer quarters—on Te Aro Flat, for instance —take a block of land while the properties are still comparatively cheap, for the purpose of laying it out attractively with trees. 1500 BANKS. Discussing other phases of the planning of London, Mr. Young referred to the extraordinary number of banks commanding street corners. One of the most conspicuous facts about London, since the War, as had been pointed out recently in a London paper, was the growth in tho number of bank buildings and the way in which they had occupied a great proportion of the finest corner sites. It might bo imagined that there were already plenty of banks in the Great Metropolis, but altogether, including the numerous foreign banks in the city, there were no fewer than 1500 in the v Metropolitan area. The reasons for the taking over the expensive corner sites and erecting on them expensive buildings were the keenness of competition between the "Big Five" banking institutions and the fact that there were few better forms of investment than a good building on a corner site. VALUE OF ART GALLERY. Another interesting impression gained by Mr. Young was in regard to the 'value of the art gallery as a civic attraction. He had noticed in travelling that on arriving in a strange town, one immediately and almost instinctively thought of seeking out the gardens and the art galleries. It behoved Wellington, which sorely lacked an institution of the kind doing justice to the Capital City, to equip itself with an up-to-date art gallery and make it as attractive as possible, for visitors formed their impressions of a city largely with such places of attraction in their, mind. While he was abroad, Mr. Young represented Wellington Rotary at the International Kotary Conference at Os tend, and also was present at the annual conference of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He travelled Home via Australia, Suez, and France, and after visiting Ostend, Bruges, and Brussels, returned to tho j British Isles to tour England and Scot- \ land. . He then went to France and Italy. The return voyage was made via America, where he spent six week's.