PICCADILLY CIRCUS UNDERGOES CHANGES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18547, 22 August 1928, Page 2

PICCADILLY CIRCUS UNDERGOES CHANGES.

NOTED ARCHITECT SUBMITS IDEAS

Completion of the famous quadrant in Regent Street has made a problem of Piccadilly Circus. The " hub" of the world, ’ as the famous circus is .known to all Londoners, has now been rebuilt on its west side where the quadrant and Piecadilly enter it, but the jumble of its east side still survives. Sir Reginald Blomfield is the architect who is responsible for the fine new buildings on the west side, and the London County Council is being urged to have him complete the new circus by drawing plans to which the unregenerate east side can in time be rebuilt. There is no hope of being able to make of the new circus what Paris has made of the Place de l’Opera. Lon don’s rather dingy opera house is likely to remain in Co vent Garden, surrounded by the sounds and smells of a fruit and vegetable market. It is hoped, however, that provision will be made without delay for giving Piccadilly Circus a unity that it woefully lacks to-day, and an architectural treatment more nearly worthy of its great prestige. It was bound to come, for the original circus has long been lost. A circus is a round place at the intersection of streets, and the small original circus at the intersection of Piccadilly and Lower Regent Street now forms only one corner of the great triangle that is customarily referred to as Piccadilly Circus. Nor is the present triangle more than a step toward the even Larger Piccadillv Circus of the future.

It is universally assumed that the future Piccadilly Circus will be a rectangle formed by carrying the line of the north side of the quadrant straight across to Shaftesbury Avenue, and cutting away most of the triangular island

site on which the Pavilion Theatre now stands. This setting back and rebuilding of the east side will be the next and perhaps the final step in the evolution of Piccadilly Circus. The sites on which Sir Reginald Blomfield has been rebuilding on the west side are Crown. property, while most of the sites on the east side belong to the London County Council. He has already put into drawings his ideas for the large rectangular circus of the

future, rebuilding the east side to the architectural ideas employed on th* west side, and making of the future circus a dignified architectural unity. He believes, indeed, that the famouquadrant in Regent Street could find an answer in a similar quadrantal curve at the foot of Shaftesbury Avenue. Nash's old quadrant in Regent Street has. of course, entirely disappeared Modern site values and traffic considerations have banished Nash and all his ideas. The Piccadilly Circus of the future is to be planned to meet needs that never troubled Nash. Sir Reginald’s plan provides for the return of Gilbert’s little Eros, not to its old site in the centre of the present triangular circus, but to a new site a little to the east in the centre of the future rectangle. This famous little fountain (which does not spout, for fear of wetting passenger* on passing buses) has been temporarily removed to make room for the construction shaft used in Building the new underground station at the circa*, and at present it occupies an impromptu pedestal on the Embankment.

The Big Underground Stations Underground operations are expected to be completed this year, and are in themselves indicative of the very heavy traffic which plans for the future circus have to reckon. The present underground station stands between Lower Regent Street and the Haymarket on the south side of the circus, but the new station, said to be capable of dealing with more passengers than any other subway station in the world, will occupy the entire underground area of the circus, and will have seven sidewalk entrances. The big central hall of the new station will lie immediately beneath the surface of the circus, with huge moving stairways in tunnels diving down to the Bakerloo railway, eighty-eight feet below the surface, and to the Piccadilly railway, 108 feet below. The Piccadilly Circus station is a junction station, the Bakerloo line running north and south beneath the West End, the Piccadilly line running east and west. Although it is possible that the London County Council will soon take action toward the adoption of a plan for the east side of the circus, there is as yet little prospect of the demolition pf the Pavilion Theatre and its chaotic neighbours. It has long been common knowledge that some day the present theatre would come down, and London has never wholly resigned itself to the electric signs which deface the entire east side at present.