Thursday appeared a Minute on a proposal to erect a pagoda, 255 feet high to the eaves, on a block of land bet een the Canton and Swatow Roads, that is to say, in the heart of the Settlement. The Council has informed the applicant that his scheme requires fall considera-i we onderstaad that at no decision has been on the subject. As proposed pagoda of some storeys is to be devoted to a multiplicity of interests, such as public baths, gymnasium, billiard rooms, Chinese and foreign restaurants, theatres etc, jit cannot be stated that there is no room for sucha scheme. Both the engineering and the commercial aspects may be left to those more immediately concerned bat inasmuch as the proposed edifice is to tower over the Settlement to total height of over' three handred feet the artistic aspect is one that concerns all residents i both in the present and 'A pagoda sheald be and nearly always is a thing of beauty, standing asa role spart and towering aloft with its graceful carves in pleasing symmetry with its tapering form. Without those curves and the embellishments of Chinese architecture it can be the Settlement that the building per-lighten the mit shoald determine the precise style and that if Japan's commercial develop-of architecture in an exceptional case of this nature, One more careat may, perhaps, be sounded io the public interest. Experience teaches us that large undertakings catering for the public amusement are sometimes financially unsaccessfal; the origi owners may surrender them to others the baudings may even remain anoccapied for long or short periods. If the Shanghai Pagoda as a thing of beauty is to remain a joy for ever we shall hope to seo it built in " manner calculated to withstand the ravages of time and weather, occupied or unoccupied; 80 that geacefal carves may remain, without being s constant drain on the commanity for repairs. Telephone poles of the Shanghai type the community has schooled itself to pat up with; but we shall hope that it would consider it money well spent not to tolerate three handred feet above its head a modera pagoda battered or unkempt.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.