CHANGING LONDON'S FACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHANGING LONDON'S FACE.

EXTENSIVE ESTATE DEALS.

MILLION POUNDS SLICES. Probably no one man has had so much to do with changing the face of London in the last ten years as had Sir Howard Frank, head of a firm of estate agents and auctioneers, who died suddenly in January. Through Sir Howard the ownership of some of the most valuable acres in the heart of London ' have been transferred ; through him there have risen in the place of old and stately mansions magnificent modern structures which have become new London landmarks. Sir Howard sold Devonshire House, Piccadilly, the first of the noble London mansions to give place to luxury flats. He also sold Grosvenor House, Park Lane, for the Duke of Westminster, and the new Grosvenor House—a magnificent block of flats, is as well known as was the old. Then he disposed, for £1.520,000, of the Hotel Cecil site, on which new offices have already taken definite shape —an addition to the Thames-side features. The Golden Cross site in the Strand, on which the fine new South Africa House is being built, went through Sir Howard's hands; so did Meux's Brewery site, where the Dominion Theatre now stands; the site of the new Broadcasting House in Portland Place; and the large site at the corner of Berkeley Square and Bruton Street—which included the old London home of the Duchess of York—bought by the Canadian Pacific Railway for a palatial £3.000,000 hotel. The value of the land is said to be more than £1,000.000. The sale of the Crystal Palace, with 200 acres, was another thing Sir Howard accomplished. Another was the disposal of the entire British Empire Exhibition at Wembley which has become a town of factories.