NEW PICCADILLY CIRCUS.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15274, 26 June 1923, Page 9

NEW PICCADILLY CIRCUS.

FAMOUS FOUNTAIN MAY GO. Plans have now been completed for the reconstruction, above and below ground, of Piccadilly Circus, one of the most famous traffic centres in the world. The plans provide for setting back the- frontages at the Swan and Edgar corner of Piccadilly and Regent Street, setting hhek the County Fire Office corner of Regent Street and Windmill Street, the construction of subways, and a large central .underground tube station. They necessitate the removal of the most notable feature of the Circus, the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. It is understood that the Westminster City authorities favour its removal to the Leicester Square garden. In this event another home must be round for the Shakespeare Monument which now occupies the centre of Leicester Square. The Piccadilly Circus fouutala with its little Eros, God of Love, and his bow, was erected in 1893 as a memorial to “the good earl," Lord Shaftsbury, whose philanthropic work for Hie poor was the admiration of the mid-Victorian world. The construction of subways leading to the tube station from every comer of the Square will enable the Westminster Council to remodel the traffic lines and reconstruct the refuges. The main entrance to the tube station will still be on the Criterion side of the Circus. Haphazard Building.

Architects and others concerned with the beautification of cities view with concern the haphazard manner in which rebuilding is taking place in London, and urge that the Government shoulh appoint a commission of experts to guide and advise owners and others in their building so that the ne\\ London which is arising out of the old may be a worthy imperial city. “London,” said Mr Henry Aldridge, secretary of the National Housing and Town Planning Council, “is not an ordinary city—it is the heart of the Empire and should be made worthy of it. If a calamity like the Great Fire overtook us again we should be in exactly the same position, with no definite scheme of rebuilding to turn to, and no Christopher When to devise a scheme as he did at the request of Charles 11. after the Great Fire.”