NEW BANK OF ENGLAND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18340, 17 December 1927, Page 21 (Supplement)

NEW BANK OF ENGLAND.

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 19.)

Another new idea which they have adopted here is to glaze these overhead windows with vita glass to admit the ultra-violet rays of the sun apd thus bring health to the clerks working at their desks below.

A £5,000,000 Cheque. Wherever possible, the wonderful scheme of interior decoration and plastering of the. old bank is to be maintained in the new building. Gelatine moulds, drawings and models of the old ceilings, rosettes and mouldings have been preserved as demolition took place, and specially selected craftsmen will carry out the work of reproducing these in the finest medium. In some parts of the bank solid walls and arches of beautiful brickwork have had to be used temporarily, and, as the building is completed, these will be replaced by more enduring material. The most astonishing feature about the work is the almost uncanny secrecy with which it is being done. - Every daythousands of inquiring spectators, many of them visitors from the United States and overseas, peer through the doorways without becoming more than dimly aware of the great monument that is slowly coming to perfection. Within a hundred yards or so of the bank, buildings have subsided and collapsed. The bank itself has no fear of such a catastrophe, for its foundations are being laid as Arm and solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. The cost, of the new bank is estimated to-day at £5,000,000. It will house, in addition to the ordinary offices and business of the bank, the credit of Great Britain in' the form of those big blocks of pure gold, generally known as bullion, which ure stored in the long, vaulted strongrooms. The new Bank of England will be the finest building in the British Empire, and it is being built to last at least a thousand years,