HEIGHT OF BUILDINGS

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 8

HEIGHT OF BUILDINGS

A Rugby message in a recent issue mentioned that*- by Royal Warrant last year, the Royal Fine. Art Commission "was empowered to call attention to any project or development which, in the opinion of the commission, might appear to affect amenities of a national or public character." This order of reference is a wide one, and if it applies to country as well as city, and to natural objects as well as to fine arts, such a commission could throw a ! powerful searchlight on the defacing of the .countryside, and forest-destruc-tion, that are. complained of alike in the Old Country and in this. But the commission's present observation is confined to the height of buildings iin London, now authorised to 100 [feet, nearly the limit recognised here. In Wellington, however, there are no St.. Paul's Cathedrals, nor other old works of. famous architects whose conceptions were higher in nobility but less in height than the buildings erected by their modern business successors. A sight of St. Paul's is a; national privilege, and, the commission thinks, should not be blotted out with impunity.' ' But the commission's report has also a bargaining side. "Increase of "height," it is stated, "is a concession of which the money value is often great." So why should not owners of higher, buildings,pay for the greater height permission, in money or in kind, as by selling back frontages and subordinating angles to light? The suggestion challenges thought. A city authority is expected to be paid for the use of the upper air. But the use of the street itself, for parking vehicles, is not paid for. Yet the higher the buildings, the more the traffic congestion. The Royal Fine Art Commission has touched a subject that is by no means as simple as it looks. ■•.'■'■