NEXT BIG EXHIBITION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2191, 21 September 1907, Page 4 (Supplement)

NEXT BIG EXHIBITION.

PLEASURE CITY NOW UNDER CONSTRUCTION. Preparations are now being made at Shepherd’s Bush for the FrancoBritish Exhibition of 1908. At haif-a-dozen different points foundations are being laid as if for a garden city on a miniature scale. Elsowhere tall steel pillars rise skywurd, and at another point a deep excavation extending to some four hundred feet in lenglit by something over a hundred feet wide suggests quarrying operations. An army of workmen, digs and hammers and lays endless rows of bricks; there are steel pillars and girders and tie-rods all over the place; there is cement made and cement in the making and concrete blocks and the raw material of concrete blocks in every conceivable corner of the ground; and, running nearly from one end of the ground to the other, by way of contrast, is an avenue of young trees, very fresh and green amid the apparent chaos and general dustiness all around. This is believed to be the most ambitious scheme of an exhibition since that planned by Sir Joseph Baxter in Hyde Park in 1851, the bulk of which still survives in the Crystal Palace ■it Sydenham. The space to be covered by the Shepherd’s Bush Exhibition is nearly 150 acres.

In a few months the excavation referred to will be ready for conversion into a great lake, surrounded by eight water-pavilions, and spanned by a graceful steel bridge. A spacious stadium of the Olympian games is also part of the plan, and will include a running path, cyol e track, and a swimming lake, surrounded by seating and standing accommodation for 65.000 spectators.

From the foundations mentioned will rise a delightful garden club, a fine a lit building, exhibition halls, a theatre, and numerous smaller buildings as adjuncts to tlie pleasure citynow in course of erection.