SUBMERGING ST. PAUL’S

Evening Star, Issue 21285, 14 December 1932, Page 9

SUBMERGING ST. PAUL’S

HIGH NEARBY BUILDINGS LONDON, December 2. Although London is proud of its reverence for Sir Christopher Wren, and celebrated the tercentenary of his birth on October 20 with eulogies and acclamation, there is a sad lack of consistency in its enthusiasm. There has been no stint during recent days of speeches, newspaper articles, and exhibitions in honour of the great architect and his work, but his greatest work of all, St. Paul’s Cathedral, is in more danger than ever of being submerged. The Post Office, for example, is putting the last touches this week to a tall building with two towers, which will not only shut the cathedral out from view from the south, but put it out of scale. Rising a full 160 ft, the towers, situated as they are between Queen Victoria street and Carter lane, .throw out a humiliating challenge to Wren’s cupolas, and would, if they could, dwarf them into insignificance. If a private company had had the temerity to do tnis there would, of course, have been a veritable eruption of sulphurous criticism, but nobody as yet seems to have raised his voice against the Post Office, which though usually insensitive to public outcry, might possibly be brought to a feeling of shame.