A BUSINESS CITY

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 31, 5 August 1933, Page 12

A BUSINESS CITY

IT BUILDS FOR ITS JOB

NO GOOD SPACE WASTED

(By P.N.)

If licensed drinking houses return to the United States —and things arc pointing heavily that way—will they evolve a new architecture? Tor many years now in the United Stages the drinking place has been an illegal, more or less hidden thing. During that period of repression (not suppression) the drinking place for motorvehicles has made a Mg advance. An American volume on town planning and architecture features in its pages the modern petrol station (gas station, it is called)/as being one of the evidences of civic progress. The- motor-vehicle drinks at a kind of little temple, with pump-columns in a Greek row. Will man, proud man, having won back alcoholic freedom, dvink at anything less! The accommodation hotel has lonp had an architecture of its own/ Th( old drinking den, the bad boy of the family, brought disgrace. Has tho lesson been learned? Will Hhe speakeasy be replaced by something which dare hold up its head? The importance that modern America —pre-slump America, at any rate —attached to architecture and town-plan-ning has been, widely demonstrated. For instance, modern America believes in "railroad and vessel terminals" that have architectural beauty as well as utilitarian completeness. Terminal conveniences mean that passengers can pass from railway to destination (or to other traffic lines) "with speed, safety, and comfort." Wellington, now at last combining its two obsolete stations, will road with interest that "tho cost of good terminals is more than repaid by public goodwill." Such equipments "recommend a town to the traveller, who is glad to return again at his earliest convenience, bringing back hi* money to spend." That sounds much better than coming to AVellington to get on tho City Council's relief works. There is something more in the volume in review concerning the larger hotels. "Hotels in the past have been very wasteful of valuable street frontage* which might have been used for retail purposes." Instead, the street frontage is now given over to shops, and the hotel uses the first floor (with appropriate entrance and big handsome windows) and Tipper floors. It v seems that a hotel occupying an "island" block with many yards of street frontage would create a front line of shops and do hotel business behind and above them. From the first and succeeding'floors the hotel life com--maiids better light and view. Theatres and even banks are affected by similar considerations. ""Even banks are departing from the idea that they must be encased in great monuments of stone, and in some instances the latest banking structures are providing shops 'on the street fronts." In Sydney there is a church which has sold its site at a high figure to enable Martin Place to .bo extended to Macquarie Street; the ldnd has brought such a price that the new completed church on a less valuable site will start debt-free. That is to say, the church will move and will recreate itself elsewhere. But in Cincinnati there is a church built on a site fronting three streets. It was built back from the streets, and was able to sell its frontages bit by bit until it was surrounded by nonreligious buildings. On the front street arose shops which were under contract to have an architecture harmonious1 with that of the sacred edifice behind them. An entrance to tho church itself was reserved, and the church continued its mission behind the rampart of incomeearners. , ' ' Of course, income-earning since 1929 has not been what it was before. And for the moment many cities, in America and elsewhere, arc "over-shopped." But' that will pass. In the past the retailer has been the largest rent-payer in the modern city, and he will be again. The capacity of • retailing/ to pay high rents depends largely on the amenities a city provides (including good railway and shipping terminals, and a street system adequate for traffic) ■nd on the "normalcy" of trade. It is during the upset of abnormal times that the farseeing man anticipates the lines along N which normality will reestablish itself. If his anticipation is correct and ho has the courage to back it, his tide of fortune really begins to flow froni the bottom of the pit.