NEW WESTMINSTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 83, 7 April 1936, Page 20

NEW WESTMINSTER

THREE MILLION SCHEME

• Striking changes are now being rapidly made in the character of that quarter of Westminster which lies on the main approach to Lambeth Bridge and just off MiUbank and Grosvenor Road. The scheme that is in progress will have cost, when finally completed a sum in the neighbourhood of £3 000,000, says the "Daily Telegraph. About six years ago the Duke of Westminster sold about 8i acres of the Grosvenor estate, bounded on the north by Horseferry Road, and fronting Marsham, Page, Earl, and other streets, to Associated London Properties, Ltd. Only in recent months, however, has it become possible to start the active development of thisi large area known as the Grosvenor-Millbank estate, with its three-quarters of a mile of street frontages. Some 600 families living on the estate, mainly in very small two-storey houses, let on weekly and monthly tenancies, had to be rehoused in the same district. This large transference naturally delayed development, for it was completed less than twelve months a The purhase of certain leasehold interests also caused delay, and it was not until last April that demolition was put in hand. > Since then matters have gone on apace. Two blocks of land, about an acre and a quarter altogether, on either side of St. John's Gardens, have gone to the Westminster Hospital, and the erection of the Nurses' Home on the west side has begun. An imposing office block named Horseferry House has been built on.an island site of 25,00.0 sq. feet fronting Horseferry Road and adjoining Thames House, It also has a frontage to a new thoroughfare, Dean Ryle Street, which, when another new street has been completed to. the south, will join up Horseferry Road with the approaches to the Tate Gallery. Two large blocks of more than. 150 flats each are in course of erection in Marsham Street. These will be completed in June and December respectively. . An office block occupying an area of 60,000 sq. feet, and with a frontage of over 500 feet in Horseferry Road, opposite the offices of the Gas Light and Coke Co. is to be started shortly.

Plnas are in hand for the early development of the remainder of the estate about three acres.