To the Editor of the "Nonrtu-Cama Dany News."
Sir,—With due respect for the opinion expressed in your leading article, I beg to say that not a few people will disagree with the view that the new Administration Building is a "handsome erection."
It is certainly not handsome, and it is an architectural failure in more respects than one. Apart from the fact that its foundations have sunk some six inches, so that the base of the building itself is below the road level, the whole edifice is too heavy and squat in appearance. The top looks unfinished. Much too heavy and massive material has been employed, and the whole design is suggestive of some glorified American gaol building. Instead of approaches by flights of stone steps, there are mean little entrances, and the central approach, especially, is hidden and wholly—insignificant looking.
One would have expected, for such an important edifice as the Shanghai Municipal Administration Building, that the plans should have definitely allowed for the inclusion of statuary or bronze panels commemorative of outstanding events in Shanghai's history, as for instance, the landing of Lindsay and Gutzlaff in 1833, probably the earliest instance of foreign intercourse with this city, down te the epochal welcome by the Council of a Chinese Advisory Committee.
Too much money had been spent on masses of granite, so that even the interior decoration had to suf-for, and cheap and ugly Japanese imitation marble panelling took the place of the genuine article.
There seems to be a fearful lack of artistic taste and pride in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.