CIRCUS PERFORMANCES.
Sir,—I see that there is a senseless outcry against the proposed plan of the Board of Works to build on a portion of the open space now available at Piccadilly Circus, and I write to protest against the pestilent heresy that prompts it. What, Sir, I ask, has the Board to do with "beauty"? As a public body, responsible to the ratepayers, they have only one thing to consider, and that is, "utility." Why, then, should they not seize upon every vacant inch of ground at their disposal, and convert it into a Central Pig Market? Such a thing could not be better installed than at the end of Regent Street, and here is the very site for it. Expecting to see some active steps taken to set this on foot,
I am, Sir, your obedient Servant,
Nothing if not Practical.
Sir,—Your Correspondent, "One with an Eye to the Sublime," is right in attacking the gross Vandalism of the Board, but, in his proposed scheme for statues and fountains, he falls miserably short of what is really wanted to make Piccadilly Circus what it should be; namely, the grandest open space in Europe. The ground should be cleared from St. James's Church to Leicester Square, East and West, and opened up southwards the whole width to the Duke of York's Column. Upon the space so secured, a white marble pavement, broken only by colossal water-works, groups of classic statuary, splendid monuments, and groves of orange-trees, should be laid, and here, to the plash of silvery cascades, utterly outrivalling the greatest display of which Versailles is capable, and, to the music of half-a-dozen separate military bands, the jaded Londoner should disport himself from morn to dewy eve. You ask as to the cost. Well, a rate of fifteen shillings in the pound for a hundred and fifty years would soon settle that, and I am sure there is not a taxpayer in the parishes immediately concerned who would not willingly jump at this trifling charge to see the scheme realised. At least, this is the view at the present moment taken of the matter by
Yours, obediently,
An Enthusiastic Outsider.
Sir,—They are talking of pulling down St. Mary-le-Strand and wish to cut off the steps of St. Martin's. Why not move them both and set them up back to back on the disputed ground? One could face Piccadilly and the other look up Coventry Street. The idea is a happy one and has the merit of bringing together in juxtaposition the works of our two great Renaissance architects Gibbs and Wren. I offer it to your artistic readers for what it is worth and beg to subscribe myself,
Yours, tentatively,
A Local Mecænas.
Sir,—There was some time since some sensible talk of erecting a gigantic iron tower in the neighbourhood of the St. Martin's Baths and Wash Houses. Surely no finer site could be found for such an erection than that provided by Piccadilly Circus. Here, with a sufficiently ample base, such for instance as could be furnished by the entire available space in question, a thing of the kind might rise to, say, the height of 1,000 feet and have one, two or even three theatres at the top. Several restaurants could be accommodated on the upper floors, and the lower 500 feet might be partly relegated to a sausage manufactory and partly let out in chambers. The whole would afford a pleasing and striking coup d'œil to any one approaching it either from Waterloo Place, Piccadilly or Shaftesbury Avenue, and prove, I think, a happy compromise and solution of the somewhat vexed question of the utilisation of the disputed space. At least, so the matter strikes your suggestive Correspondent,
A Hopeful Ædile.