LONDON’S NEW £750,000 FLATS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 171, 10 October 1927, Page 13

LONDON’S NEW £750,000 FLATS

RESTAURANTS, BANKS, SHOPS AND PUBLIC HALL

Another great London improvement scheme was started recently, when some 500 workmen began to" lay the foundations of a huge seven-storeyed building in Baker Street, estimated to cost £750,000, and which will contain: 200 flats of the most modern type. A big department store. Shops. Banks. A public hall. A restaurant. The building, which is being constructed under a scheme prepared by the Metropolitan Flailway Company, will cover a huge vacant site adjoining Baker Street Station, and at the corner of Upper Baker Street and Marylebone Road. There will be ten acres of floor space. A novel feature will be that the flats will have internal communication with the railway station, so that tenants will almost step from their homes into the train. It will be two years before the great building is completed, and its construction will give employment to about 2,000 men. To facilitate operations men are now engaged in the construction of a railway siding on the site, to which will be brought by train many materials necessary for the work. In making the siding workmen are engaged on one of the toughest jobs London navvies have known for some time. It is the beraking down of the massive stone wall partition between the site and the station. “In the ordinary'wwa r , wall are ‘picked’ down,” an official of the firm of contractors engaged in the work said, “but this wall is so tough that we are having to break it down with pneumatic paving breakers, known to the public as ‘pneumatic drills.’ ’’