LONDON’S “OLD LADY”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 11 February 1933, Page 10

LONDON’S “OLD LADY”

“SCRAPS” A TRADITION

WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE SITE

For nearly 150 year the Bank of England has had its home on a three-, acre island site surrounded, by a squat black one-story wail which has heroine/ as famous as the bank itself. It is a handsome and well-proportioned wall, despite the fact that in reality it is. a fortress wall, pierced by inconspicuous loopholes at its one exposed corner, ana so placed as to offer a minimum of target at its other corners. All its windows are blind windows, and the acids of London's air have stained most of its surface black and streaked the upper parts of its columns and cornices with greyish-white. This blind fortress wall is all that has heretofore been visible, of the bank from the outside—this and the beadles in beaver hats and salmon pink capes who guard its gates. It is difficult enough to imagine a one-story building occupying any lie as fabulously valuable as that of the Bank of England. Taking up an entire block, it may readily be called the. most valuable site in the world. It is, or course, easy enough to explain the presence of ft one-story scheme of hanking halls and courts and gardens covering all of this huge (liree-acre silo, for the whole scheme dates back to the <>ncand two-story era of city architecture, and has survived as a historical monument —historical because of the 200 years of accidental, illogical, and casual accretions of privilege which have made the Bank of England the ruler of a financial empire more far flung than the British Empire itself. It is one of the wonders of the worldwide monetary machine of the city that, by a process of growth which lias been peculiarly, almost laughably, English, an old private bank, responsible iu any formal sense only to; its own shareholders, should have become the Government’s bank, the bankers bank (as all central banks .tend to be come), the sole bank of issue for Eng land and India, the keeper of the entire gold reserve of the country, the, authority in charge of the credit and currency system, including inflation and deflation.

Some of the big English banks whose tall new buildings now stand grouped about it are larger*in point of deposits than the Bank of England itself; but none of lliem exercises her maternal powers and privileges. The old fortress wall has become so typical, of .the oldestablished habits and tradition, above all perhaps of the habit of impenetrable mystery, which characterise the Bank of England, that around it ripples a constant current of affectionate jest on I lie subject of the Old Lady of Threadneedle street and her curls and her crinolines. THE MYSTIC THREAD The mystic thread of continuity remains unbroken. The old wall remains intact except where the tall now building within has pushed its main fro.it through and now presents to the street outside a facade of white stone and massive bronze doors with windows in its columned and porticooil upper stories. Such lovitv on the part ol the Old Lady, such infidelity to the architectural crinolines of her past, must surely constitute the end of an architectural era. in the city. In addition to the outidc wall, several of the best known parts of the in ierior—which architects have described as the only "palace” in the city—have linen carried through the great rebuilding with as little modification as possible The main entrance in 'llirea-i----lieedle street has been changed more than most of the hoi lei-, known parts, although the new Garden Court preserves at least the memory ol the leafy garden court of old. Most city men know the Lothbury entrance better.

and her Lothbury Court, with its colonnades and the fine arches leading to the Bullion Court, has been retained 111 all : ts essentials'. Tile beautiful treasury and the inner treasury have been reconstructed and woven into the fabric' of the new build big in such a wav as to be more easily seen than heretofore. The sequence of corridors and anterooms leading to. the court room, where generations.of directors have met, has been duplicated on the new second floor, but the corridors leading to the- private rooms of the governor remain on the ground floor. Has the Bank of-England ever before been known to exhibit to the outside world anything more illuminating tli-vn its blind wall? Yet in Gallery VIII. at Burlington House we see the worship’' of the golden calf as the bank lias practised it for generation after generation in the dark fortress in tile heart of the city. We 'see the strange rites of .’“moving gold,” “weighing gold,” and “receiving bullion.” Wo see governors, directors, and chief officials attired in the stiff black canonicals of their creed. We see “ a director announcing the blink rate to chief officials.” It may be that none of this lias n great deal to do with painting as; painting is understood outside the fortress wall of the baqk, but at least it., helps us to understand why the pound sterling is as strong as it is.'