TRIBUTE TO WREN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19254, 19 August 1924, Page 8

TRIBUTE TO WREN.

SCHEME FOR HEW LOKDOH. PLAN THAT WAS REJECTED. REBUILDING OF TOKIO. “If you seek his monument, look around.”' visitors to St. Paul’s Cathedral read of Christopher Wren; but in future it may be possible to say: “If you seek his monument, go to Tokio.” A remarkable thing is about to happen. After more than 250 years Sir Christopher’s great plan for rebuilding a- beautiful London to take the place of the city destroyed in the Great Fire is to ho taken from its pigeonhole and examined by Japanese experts, who hope to get from it hints and suggestions which will help them to rebuild Tokio and Yokohama, The Japanese are determined to rebuild these cities according to the beat ideas available, and they believe there are no plans like Wren’s for making a really beautiful city. They have therefore asked the Corporation of London to allow their representatives to have access to all the records relating to Wren’s reconstruction of the city following the Great Fire, and these will' be thoroughly examined before the ruined cities of Japan are rebuilt. It is a remarkable tribute to the vitality of one of the world’s greatest architects. After the Great Fire of London, Sir Christopher was appointed "Surveyorgeneral and principal architect for the rebuilding of the whole city.” The fire had raged from September 2 to September 6, 1666, and on the twelfth of the same month, only a few davs after the disaster. Wren, who was at. the time professor of astronomy and geometry at Oxford University, laid before the King a sketch plan of his design for the rebuilding of the city. It was a great plan, which won general approval, and if carried out would have made London the most magnificent city in the world. REJECTION OF THE SCHEME A cathedral even larger and finer than the St. Paul’s he afterwards built was to form the centre of the new city, like a jewel in a setting of streets specially designed to enhance the jewel ; but the plan was rejected, and Wren had to be content with a modified cathedral. As a London writer remarks the men of the seventeenth century cannot be altogether blamed for rejecting Wren’s heroic scheme, for those wore the days before insurance, and there were no funds availfor anything so magnificent. Wren, in his plan, treated the whole devastated area as if it were vacant land waiting to be used for the first time. He carried one of his main highways, for example, right through the centre of the Guildhall. About 436 acres of buildings wore burned down, and the sites were the property of hundreds, and possible thousands, of persona. all of whose claims would have had to be legally decided in the courts if Ihe huge site was to bo re-arftinged as Wren wished. That would have meant years of litigation, and meanwhile the building operations would have been delayed. THE GREAT ARCHITECT'S WORK. Wren, however, with a genius of a great man, adapted himself to the second best, and England has his work in the splendid cathedral, the churches, and the city India which ho has left to posterity. It is a wonderful tribute that Japan' is now paying to the great British architect, and it ie remarked by the writer quoted that it is strange that it should come a( a time when there aro those in London who would destroy some of Wren’s fine buildings. What, it is aptly asked, would Wren himself have thought if ho could have known that 200 years after he was in his grave men would come from Japan to study his plans for London?