A War Memorial for Belfast. 6 



two roiids with the stream between them (FiG. 4) and when 

 the small houses needed more floor space for their trade (in those 

 days the merchant lived in his shop), the gardens were built o\'er 

 and became small warehouses and factories. Later on, Donegall 

 Place was built over the open Castle Gardens, and the wide 

 tradition of High Street was carried on. Later still, it was 

 customary to retain the unusual width between house-fronts, 

 which had become so marked a local characteristic, but to use the 

 space in front of each house for a little garden. 



To this day, we can often trace the old conditions : the odd 

 ribbon-like strips of building between Donegall Place and Fountain 

 Street (the Carlton Restaurant is a good instance) retain the 

 original plan of the small house with the long garden at the 

 back : to this day, all through the centre of the city, and even in 

 Donegall Square, there are posts and railings, or breaks in the 

 pavement, which still indicate the edges of the old gardens. 



It would be easy to enlarge upon these " civic fossils." It is 

 sufficient for my purposes to show that a design originally good 

 will serve for many a long day without losing all its value : I 

 wanted especially to show how we derive our wide streets mainly 

 from the little river which is still flowing underneath High Street, 

 and to the good lay-out of Belfast three hundred years ago. To 

 a large extent, the last hundred years have spoiled our good little 

 plan : certainly we have nothing more to gain from it : and in 

 this generation we have replaced it, so far, by — nothing. It is a 

 fact that we owe most of our present and future difficulties in 

 city improvement to the absence, during the city's modern 

 growth, of any order or plan. Not merely was there no city 

 plan, but for many and many a year nobody in Belfast ever 

 thought of a plan as being desirable. Yet it is tixie that, here 

 and there, small portions of the city were planned, piecemeal — 

 (notably the neighbourhood of York Street, and the area around 

 Adelaide Street) — but they were badly planned. They are on 

 the ancient "gridiron" principle, as old as Egypt and Assyria, 

 which has so long disfigured America, and which America 



