Subways were once shelters.(Viewpoint)(Column)

Crain's New York Business, July, 2005 by Brady, James

Byline: James Brady When we arrived in January 1959 in London, where I was to live and work as a correspondent for a couple of years before being shipped off to Paris, what were still called "bomb sites'' punctuated the landscape of the great city. World War II had been over for 14 years, but all over London were empty spaces between homes or flats or businesses, gaping and ugly as a missing front tooth, the unpaved ground composed of crushed brick or masonry, used simply as off-street parking lots.

They were places where the bombs had fallen years before and that, for one reason or another--most often financial--hadn't yet been filled and rebuilt. Instead, they were marked with small, neatly lettered City of London signs that read: "bomb site.'' Had men...

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