WEMBLEY TRANSFORMED

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 February 1927, Page 8

WEMBLEY TRANSFORMED

PALACE BECOMES ROAD METAL.

One year has sufficed to see the ornate buildings of the Empire Exhibition at Wembley turned into factories, laundries, garages and restaurants and scattered over Britain. Huge quantities of material have sjso been obtained from them, not only for housing schemes, but for the making of toads, “The Palace of Beauty” is now lying on one of the new arterial roads. Ceylon is a coachbuilding factory in London. Nigeria is a garage in Preston. Palestine will soon be a laundry in Glasgow. East Africa has become a furniture factory at Letchworth. Sierra Leone is an Irish restaurant at Tramore, County Waterford. Mr. A. J. Elvin, the demolition con tractor, a business man of 27, who turned to the demolition of buildings at Wembley from the breaking-up of ammunition dumps, has signed a contract with Mr. James White and the liquidators of the exhibition taking over the majority of the . remaining buildings, including all the large colonial pavilions. - ...... “While during thb past year I have dealt with 5000. tons of dismantled material.-” said Mr. Elvin, “I shall be handling in my fresh job, which has to be completed under the contract Withifi the, fi&xt 12 mbnths, not less than 15,000 tons of steel Work, timber,

glass and fittings of every description. “I aftf taking over all the sbmi-per-mahfent briildings, the pdvilions which 1 are to be saved from demolition, being the,vast concrete permanent buildings, such aS . the Palaces of Engineering, of Housing and of Arts, the Civic Hall and the conference halls and theatre. “The Canadian and, Australian pavilions, containing 2500 tons of timber each, and India, which will yield 1000 ions of sfeel, are among the big items to be tackled. All of these will provide building tnateridl for Britain; several factories br garages will come out of India aibftb, btii there will also be fl <usands of lorry loads of hard confbfr toad-inaking. “A small army of Workmen will be ehgageil on tfie job, which will go on day and night, including Saturdays and SufidayftJ’