The Face of London [antikvár]

IntroductionTo THE AIR TRAVELLER all dtics look alike at night: the centre resplendent with the brightly coloured lights that allegedly bemuse the rustic, and a vast ring of suburbs where the pinpricks of light become less and less regular.As seen through the port-hole, night-time London conforms to this pattem, but as befits Europe's largest city, the core is more brilliant than most and the suburbs extend even further into the distance. The first feature that can be easily identified is the silver-grey strip of the river Thames that slices the city into north and south, as it meanders through the mosaic of diverse districts that have developed in their haphazard ways to provide London with the wide variety of amenities for which it is famous.The second features to stand out clearly are the black holes that the parks punch into the glimmering texture of the streets. Once given the position of the river and the parks, the practised eye can detect the main streets of the West End: Oxford Street, Piccadilly, the Strand, and Cromwell Road coming in from the West; Edgware Road and Tottenham Court Road running north; the Commercial Road running out to the East; and, on the south bank, the main roads leading away from the many bridges that cross the river. Those familiar with central London will be able to pick out the famous buildings that have been floodlit, but the rest of London merely proves its existence with the anonymity of an endless array of street lights.This book is intended to illustrate the famous buildings as well as those that do not merit floodlighting, but which do provide London with its individuality, and at the same time supply the mundane necessities of city life.Like that of any democratically run city, London's development has been controOed by a series of compromises. It is neither an eflBcient, streamlined, big business-orientated city, nor is it the kind of historic city where the buildings are of such architectural perfection that their exact form has been preserved for the wonder of succeeding generations, left behind by the pace of twentieth-cenmry life for those who have the time and inclination to come and witness its former glories. Over the centuries many of the buildings we would find interesting today have of course been replaced by new ones, and, at present, many parts of London are dominated by the huge scale of the 'instant' ofiBce blocks that are the modem businessman's contribution to the vocabulary of city design. There are, however, other parts where the increasing pressure for new oflSce space has been met by the conversion of existing houses into new offices, in an attempt to maintain the traditional scale of the city for the benefit of the community, rather than just for the developer. This also shows the attachment that Londoners have for the traditional style of their city, and how they want the past to be expressed in the present, to provide the continuity that would be lacking in an entirely modem city.It is a paradox of expanding cities that the centre has to be modernized more quickly than the outskirts, in order to provide the amenities required of it. For