Part 9

It was the aristocratic qualities of restraint and dignity, combined with a very urbane good-nature reflected from the brightness of the street and the easy flow of the buildings one after the other which made old Regent Street the happy, lovable place it was not only to London but to the whole Empire. Everyone remembered delightful walks there. To country cousins it was the very essence of the West End. For them it set the note and gave value to all that part of the town. It was, therefore, in every sense of the term, metropolitan. No other capital in Europe had anything like it. The uniformity of the Rue de Rivoli or even of the Avenue de l’Opera was dull and mechanical in comparison. Starting at the base court of Waterloo Place, we saw that Nash had created a magnificent procession of fine shapes, rectangular places, recessed courts, avenues, circuses, the Quadrant and further avenues and vistas, and had lined them himself, and with the help of his architect friends, with a series of stately yet thoroughly English and lovable buildings—a unique achievement in the history of architecture. To the Regent, accustomed to the dark brick buildings which formed the mass of the London of his day, when he first drove down his friend’s street it must have seemed as if Nash had possessed Aladdin’s lamp and with it had created a new and glistening fairyland. To us who remember it before it was broken into, or its plaster and paint allowed to deteriorate, it seems to-day a lovely but almost equally unreal dream: so far has it already receded into the past.

Let us now turn to the new Regent Street which has taken the place of this unique and beautiful possession. Let us remember first that the conditions of control have remained the same. By this I mean that the property is still throughout Crown property, and that the control could have been as tight, and as wise, too, if the same wisdom had been used, as it was in Nash’s day. The Commissioners of Woods and Forests, who administer the Crown Estate, now public property, pass all the designs and lay down any restrictions they desire. They can even impose designs and architects upon their tenants, as they have done in the Quadrant and are doing in Piccadilly Circus.

Let us consider the new street as a whole before we discuss any individual buildings. What is its character? What does it stand for in our civilisation? Has it anything to offer different from, but comparable in value to, the old? Let us take the most obvious effects first. The height of the buildings is different and much greater. So much sunlight will not now enter the street, and the general air of spaciousness is no longer there. The great majority of the designs no longer stretch from return street to return street. The units, therefore, are narrower, more closely packed, and jostle one another. Under such circumstances we cannot expect the same suavity, and we certainly have not got it. The chief place where the present controllers have tried to give it to us is in the Quadrant. We will return to that directly. Then the new street is in a different material from the old—in Portland stone instead of stucco. This has given the buildings a much heavier appearance and in itself is sufficient to alter the whole character of the street. On one side of the street the stone will go black. We can see that already in the Quadrant front to the Piccadilly Hotel. On the other, and in places where the weather catches it, we may expect the stone to take on the beautiful pearly quality Londoners know so well. Now that most of it is white and clean it possesses at the moment a temporary advantage which must not be expected to last. Soon we shall have a black-and-grey street, with occasional high lights like Broad Street, Bishopsgate, or any other City street in the same stone. But it will be a street of big stores instead of the City banks, or of the little shops of old Regent Street.

As we walk down new Regent Street we can already feel its new quality. It is that of parts of Oxford Street, of Corporation Street, Birmingham, or of Lord Street, Liverpool. That is to say, it is a provincial quality. The street is no longer possessed by any dominant idea. The buildings do not harmonise and melt into a single whole. They bear the ordinary anarchic relations to one another we nowadays unfortunately expect everywhere else save in Regent Street. True, the main cornices are at one level, but it is often difficult to distinguish which is the main cornice, so complicated are the new designs. Domes and turrets breaking the skyline and other individualistic advertising features have been allowed. Kingsway, especially in the lower part, is informed by more general ideas, and consequently is a better street. It is this want of submission of the individual building and trader to the whole which has changed the character of the street, and has lowered it from its old high level to that of a commonplace bustling thoroughfare, efficient enough, no doubt, for those who consider it a suburban shopping centre, but not for those who would have wished to see it symbolise again some of the best aspects of our civilisation.

Let us give the Commissioners and their advisers credit, however, for trying in two places to produce a continuous design. Of one, Piccadilly Circus, re-designed as Piccadilly Square, it is too early to speak, except, perhaps, to say that the work already done shows a slightly countrified feeling very different from the abstract character of the old circus. Of the Quadrant, however, where, like all vacillating people who do not wholly know their own minds, the Commissioners changed from the irregularities they had allowed in Lower Regent Street to an attempt to impose upon the shopkeepers a continuous and highly monumental design, more can be said. From the section which was rebuilt some years ago as part of the Piccadilly Hotel, one can envisage the effect of the Quadrant as a whole, if, and when Norman Shaw’s design is carried out. One can see that its character will be something very different from the old Quadrant. In place of that bright and happy spot, with its bold, sweeping, unbroken lines against the sky, we shall have a curved gorge lined with heavily articulated monumental architecture, of a municipal or governmental flavour. If the heavy arches are maintained the little shops will timidly peep out from beneath them. Few trades will survive such heavy-handed treatment. The little milliners and jewellery-sellers will have to give place, perhaps, to tombstone-makers and the agents for cemeteries. The gay character of the street will certainly have gone. We shall emerge from this curving cleft in mountains of stone in no mood to saunter down the rest of the street, as in the old days. But who saunters by great stores? One takes an omnibus or a taxi-cab to the store one selects, plunges in and stays there, perhaps an hour buying anything from socks to tomatoes. The character of shopping has changed, and with it necessarily, the character of the street.

Nevertheless, I am convinced, even by certain of the new Regent Street buildings themselves, like Mr. Verity’s fine St. George’s house near Conduit Street, on the left-hand side going north, and some shop fronts by Mr. Arthur Davis—a perfumery, in particular, in Upper Regent Street—that had the best architectural brains of the country been employed on this new problem of giving appropriate character to a street of great stores it could have been successfully solved. The problem, however, would have had to have been boldly faced from the start, so that when we had lost the old unity we should have had a new one to put in its place. What we have achieved is but a few isolated, disconnected, and singularly unfortunate attempts at unity and a street which is no more and no less than any other English shopping street—a cockpit for competing shopkeepers. The Regent Street we have lost was definitely—almost infinitely—more than this, and by so much are we, who own and use the new, the losers.

XXII.

FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.

FIFTH AVENUE is the most exciting street in the most exciting city in the world. At any rate, this is true in the daytime. At night, Broadway with its exaggerated Earl’s Court effects, its great drawings in electric light high up against the sky of giant motor cars, pyjama-clad men and women, appearing and disappearing, is so fantastic and absurd, and withall so thrilling, that for a few hours round about midnight it displaces the other thoroughfare, not only for the careless multitude, but for the serious person, too, if such there be when he or she has once trodden its stones. Long after twelve o’clock vast crowds line its ample sidewalks, pour in and out of its endless theatres and its always open shops, and get carried away with the carnival spirit of its illuminated advertisements. It has its sky-scrapers, too, which Fifth Avenue has not, and these are always strangest at night. To see brilliant windows and towers of light floating in the sky, where ordinarily one expects to see stars, means that one treads the pavement in no solemn, downcast manner. One walks on air, not knowing what to expect. A vermilion giant may suddenly grin at you in place of the moon, and if you stand agape you may, with equal suddenness, find yourself surrounded by artificially brightened eyes from all parts of Europe. Certainly, Broadway has its thrills with which Fifth Avenue cannot compete. It would, of course, scorn to do so. Its wonders are for the saner hours, when Broadway, in its turn, is apt to look a little dingy.

Let us return, therefore, to our proper subject, and try to form some general idea of its ordinary aspect. I think if one imagines a deep, dark, strongly flowing river, gliding swiftly and silently between great white cliffs of varying height, one will come near to it. The surface of the water is black with occasional spots of green. The black is due to endless streams of sleek, satin motor cars, eight abreast, in four lines either way, which all glide along at the same pace. The green is due to the motor omnibuses, free from all advertisements, which dot the surface. I have not seen a horse-drawn vehicle in Fifth Avenue—perhaps they are not allowed. The black river surface, which flows on for the five miles or so of the street, has an occasional rock in the centre of it. These rocks, which are really wooden towers from which the traffic is directed, are placed on the crests of the slight rises in the undulating surface of the street—I am afraid my metaphor is failing. In them a big green or red light shows night and day, and with its appearance the whole five miles of river suddenly stops, or equally suddenly, flows on again. When it stops, the waters divide, and vast crowds—mostly Israelites as of old—pass over dry shod. Only those who inhabit the land of the brave and the free would allow themselves to be so strictly regulated in this and other matters. But we have spent enough time on the stream itself, thrilling as it is to watch; let us examine now the perpendicular cliffs and the shore on either side.

The cliffs in the early part of the street are more even in height. They begin with some old residences, revived in recent years as the homes of artists, but very soon are chiefly inhabited by agents for dry goods. By Twentieth Street, however, hotels and big stores begin, and the street loses such continuity of skyline as it ever possessed. From there onwards it is a series of strongly competing buildings which rarely extend even across a whole block. The effect, therefore, against the sky is very ragged, like an ill-grown set of giant teeth. No long cornice lines run through. There are no continuous roofs—indeed, very few roofs at all to be seen. In a sense, therefore, it is not a street at all, only a collection of buildings, just as a checker-board town, like most of New York, is not really a town at all, but only a collection of city blocks. Unity of some sort, some continuous thought or character, is required for both. It is this lack of unity which makes Fifth Avenue at once so exciting and so tiring. One never knows what to expect, there is no place for the eye to rest without distraction. If the individual buildings were bad the streets would be a nightmare. As it is, they are extraordinarily good, and the street becomes a museum of fine specimens, and one knows how tiring that may be.

These specimens represent European architecture of many modern phases. French and Italian predominate, English is conspicuous by its absence. Gradually, however, especially in the banks and in buildings over ten storeys high, for which no European precedent exists, a true American type is beginning to emerge. Roughly, it consists of a rich group of stories near the ground and an equally rich group near the top, with a plain stalk between.

One of the earliest good buildings round about Thirtieth Street is that for the famous firm of jewellers and glass-workers, Messrs. Tiffany. I am told that the founder of the firm was a Venetian merchant. If so, his architect very appropriately founded his building on the Grimani Palace on the Grand Canal. He founded his scheme upon this; he did not copy the original, as is often ignorantly stated. Instead, he made a peculiarly refined building in marble and bronze, using the general composition and great scale of the Italian building as his model. A palace on the Grand Canal, with its rectangular shape and great size, is singularly like a big building on this other great canal of wealth and traffic. The same firm of architects, Messrs. McKim, Mead and White, built the Italian building for a rival firm of silver-smiths—the Gorham building—on the opposite side of the street. This building has a giant cornice and an open belvedere under it, and though built twenty-five years ago, and consequently an old building, probably in danger of destruction, it is still one of the most striking in the street. Between Thirtieth and Fortieth Streets are most of the big stores. Unlike similar buildings in England, these are solid masses of stone, brick or marble architecture standing squarely on stone piers, instead of, apparently on plate glass. These stores do not seem to rely, as ours do, on the multitude of goods shown in the windows. Everyone knows that it is possible to walk through them and examine the endless counters without being asked to buy. The windows, therefore, can have one or two typical or seasonable articles well shown. Later on, as we approach the Central Park, the shops become more specialised, and consequently smaller. Here are the dealers in pictures, in jewellery, in _bric-à-brac_, and very exquisite are their bronze windows, and indeed, their whole fronts. Gradually they are displacing the private residences from this section of the street, although a few multi-millionaires still maintain a French château or so, mostly closed, for the delectation of the rubber-necks.

With the Central Park, however, the character of the street entirely alters. One cliff disappears, and in its place you have the small trees, grass and taxi-cab race tracks of the park. On the other side you have individual houses, a few very vulgar, most of them very restrained and elegant. The park itself, though, is a failure. Its winding drives and small hummocks of hills cannot hide its rectangular shape, which the increasing height of the buildings is every day making more evident. It should be all levelled into terraces and relaid out in a formal manner. Fifth Avenue practically ends where the park ends at 110th Street and before then begins to degenerate. But out of its five miles of length it has maintained its standard of fine if competing architecture for three miles, and I know no other street of which that could be said. Apart from the green of the park, there is one restful thing which we have passed by. It is the one building of a non-competitive character, with nothing to sell—material or spiritual—the free public library. It occupies at least a couple of city blocks, and sets back from the street with low cream-coloured marble façades and porticoes. Though not entirely successful as a design, except in the rear façade to its stack of books, it comes as a very pleasant break to the commercial buildings, where between Thirty-ninth and Forty-second Streets they reach their maximum intensity.

It is not only the vast scale of the street as measured by its width, which seems enormous when one looks at the sea of traffic, but which seems narrow when one looks at the towering buildings, nor the beauty of those buildings or the delicacy of their detail that give Fifth Avenue its peculiar character and interest. Without the great masses of well-dressed men and women which crowd its wide pavements all day long it would seem dull and heavy. I have noticed that on Sunday mornings when searching for its half-buried cathedral and churches. Nowhere else have I seen such floods of beautifully-dressed women. They appear, too, to belong to all classes of society. It is only by some subtle and slight restraint in the line of a cloak that one can distinguish the woman with a few generations of wealth behind her from the stenographer or shop assistant. All wear fashionable clothes, all have brilliant complexions. The men are not so distinguished, but none are poorly dressed. Indeed, in all New York, from the furthest east to the furthest west, I could find no one in torn or dirty clothes. The air of prosperity is everywhere, the rush and flow of life goes on unceasingly. There is only one backwater, only one place where the competitive view of life is put aside. It is in the interiors of the clubs, such as the Metropolitan, the University, the Century, the Union and the Players. Here the very reverse is the case. I know no clubs in any town so spacious, so reposeful, so dignified and so pleasant. I imagine, the human spirit tired of endless competition and the unceasing striving of the individual to assert himself, instinctively makes a refuge where communism in the arts of living reaches its highest point. Some of the best Clubs are in Fifth Avenue or just off it. When one has had an overdose of the street they are the only restoratives.

XXIII.

LIVERPOOL CATHEDRAL.

LIVERPOOL has now entered into possession of a great work of the imagination. This work will go on growing until its mastery is evident to the whole world, but from now onward Liverpool can follow the growth of her Cathedral with confidence. It is no small thing that a great town should pursue an ideal of this sort. In doing so, Liverpool has herself shown something of this great quality of imagination. As a citizen I like to think whatever may be her failings, it is her outstanding attribute. During the last twenty years she has not only taken the great step, which she has lately celebrated, towards the creation of a temple to her faith, to be, I believe, some day as great and as noble as any yet made, but during the same space of time she has had the imagination and faith to follow other enterprises of this spirit, such as the establishing of a great university, and, among lesser projects, but still indicating something of the same devotion to non-material things, a town’s theatre. If the artist who has been responsible for giving life and form to the Liverpool Cathedral has risen to the heights demanded by so supreme an occasion, we must, nevertheless, remember from the outset those who have had the courage during these years to conceive the project and to provide the means for its realisation on such a scale unattempted since the Reformation. They, as well as Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, have laid the whole town under an obligation and have done a service to us all. Pericles built the temples on the Acropolis, at Athens, to direct the eyes of the Greeks, flushed with the spoils of victory, away from material things. To all Liverpool, irrespective of creed, the great building on St. James’s Mount, in its austerity and beauty, is a similar symbol and a similar gift.

Before the architect came on the scenes the site was chosen. Those who were responsible for this, against a good deal of popular clamour, deserve well of the town. No English Cathedral, with the possible exception of Durham, has so romantic a setting when you get near to it, while no other site would, in my view have provided so good a position from which the Cathedral could assert itself and what it stands for to the whole Merseyside. Already in its present truncated form it is a dominant object from the river, though there is one unfortunate grain elevator below it on the river bank which, in its present shape, seems to mock it. When its great tower, however, is completed, and its whole monumental mass is seen grouped symmetrically about it, with its subsidiary buildings at its base, like attendant tugs to a liner, it will, I think, focus as it should the interest of all the river views. It is fortunately separated from the great commercial buildings at the Pier Head, and the vaster and loftier ones which are yet to arise in that neighbourhood, by a considerable distance and a slight depression. The business quarter of Liverpool, like that of New York, being tied to certain centres, there is likely, for a century or more to come, to be an intervening space of comparatively small buildings between the Cathedral and the only structures which may possibly rival it in height or bulk. This is very important. It would be fatal to confuse two such different aspects of the town’s life.

Near at hand, and under its wing as it were, the Cathedral has the one solemn graveyard Liverpool possesses where many of the citizens of its great period are buried. It is a graveyard, too, of great romantic interest, in the base of an old quarry with lofty sides, from whose stone most of the older buildings in the town have been built. On one side is the Piranesi-like wall supporting Hope-street, lined with sloping walks and the arched entrances to vaults, while on the other is the old quarry cliff, in summer green with trees, on which the cathedral stands. It is among the great merits of Sir Giles Scott’s work that it suits itself so well in detail to this foreground, just as in bulk and outline the finished design will suit itself to the larger picture of the town as a whole. There is a cliff-like character in the bold faces of the transepts which echoes the cliff below. But it is more than that. The horizontal mass of the building, which is emphasised in a way quite unusual in a Gothic structure, tallies very happily with the horizontal mass of the great stone base which the face of the quarry forms. The greenery on this base, too, well sets off the colour of the red Woolton stone, while in the depths below among the winding paths there is hardly a single white marble tomb or angel to form a jarring note. If there is, time has softened it to obscurity, and now that the Cathedral authorities control the graveyard we may be sure no new ones will arise.