The congestion of the traffic at Hyde Park Corner caused by the increasing railway business at Victoria Station had long been a difficulty confronting the Office of Works. Decimus Burton’s arch, standing flush with Piccadilly, was then the entrance to the Green Park. On it, to the lasting sorrow of the architect, stood the colossal statue of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, by Matthew Wyatt. A work of art which provoked from a French general the grateful cry, “Enfin nous sommes vengés.” Various schemes were brought forward to solve the difficulty; none was satisfactory. It was obvious that a wider approach to Grosvenor Place was essential to success. There were many obstacles in the way, the chief of which was the difference in levels. Old people will remember that the approach to the Green Park from Grosvenor Place was by a narrow passage, a steep slope at the north-west end of Buckingham Palace garden. Had we been dealing with a bare piece of virgin ground without limitations no doubt a better scheme might have been possible; but to carry out such a plan would have involved taking a large slice off the Green Park and another off the end of the Palace garden—neither was practicable. An infinitesimal piece of the park was conceded, but there still remained the difficulty of the arch, which would have remained in an absurd island, perched up on a hillock above the surrounding roads. I proposed that it should be removed and placed where it now stands, at the end of Constitution Hill. I showed the plan, which was prepared accordingly by Mr.—afterwards Sir—John Taylor, to Mr. Gerard Noel, who was then First Commissioner of Works. He took it to Lord Beaconsfield. The Government did not wish to spend any money—a chronic condition of things—and the Prime Minister crushed the scheme with a _bon mot_. “Do away with the congestion of traffic at Hyde Park Corner? Why, my dear fellow, you would be destroying one of the sights of London!” And so for the time the plan was laughed out of court and pigeon-holed. In 1884 Mr. Shaw Lefevre persuaded the Government to take in hand a matter which was daily becoming more urgent. The scheme was carried out.