ABSTRACT
Whatever else might be done with the banks of the Thames, no one, a few years ago, would have thought of looking to them for the site of a new opera house … The Metropolitan Board of Works may have felt some natural astonishment at receiving an application for permission to utilise a portion of the reclaimed land at the Victoria Embankment by taking it for the site of an immense theatre … but they could scarcely fail to look upon the proposition favourably. 1
