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Architecture

79. The exterior of Tooting Broadway

26 January 2013
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 3
3 Comments

My kind of BroadwaySubject of one of the saddest songs ever written about the Underground, Tooting Broadway station is a location ripe for emotional statements. So here’s one. It is a thrillingly modernist smear across an otherwise unremarkable palette of suburban London. Judge it by colour, shape, size or purpose, it’s everything the surrounding area is not.

The building, completed in 1926, is bold and stylish, blessed with both grand gestures and subtle delights. In the former category belongs the enormous curved facade, built like so many of Charles Holden’s creations out of his beloved concrete, and looking dapper in its neatly-lined, nicely-hued finery:

Holden his ownIn the other category sit the illuminations that usefully pick out some of the building’s features during the day, but really come into their own at night, when the place turns the charm up even further and poses as a beautiful glittering palace. Yes, the lights are always bright on Broadway.

Broadway lightsA member of the German royal family stands guard by the entrance. He turned up a good 15 years before the station did, having just had his nine years interloping on the British throne curtailed through death. You might remember him from such titles as First Emperor of India and the Man Who Brought You The Edwardian Era:

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha not picturedI’m uneasy about royals having anything to do with the Underground. The two institutions are mutually exclusive. One values splendid isolation; the other, glorious diversity. Whenever a royal is shoved on to the Underground for some official opening or other, they look desperately discomfited or unhappy. The same goes for all the commoners playing host. Better to keep these two worlds well apart.

I know the statue predates the Northern line’s arrival, but I’m far more comfortable associating  Tooting Broadway with Patrick Fitzgerald‘s “John of Arc” than Edward VII.

(PS: Here’s a fine, five-minute snapshot of a day in the life of the station, minus all weeping/sleeping songwriters.)

78. The water tower at Chesham

23 January 2013
Architecture, Metropolitan line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 9
1 Comment

Snow place like itLike dangling an arm out the window of a hot car, the Underground occasionally swaps its default environment for one that is far fresher, if fleeting.

It does this by throwing a tentacle so far from the centre of London that it unfurls not only to the municipal boundary but beyond. Welcome to Buckinghamshire, home of red-faced anti-HS2 brigands, a stand-in for the headquarters of the United Nations, and this: Chesham station, Grade II-listed Victoriana a-go-go, and the most distant point on the network from the King Charles statue at Charing Cross.

Highlight of the place for me is the water tower, a relic from the 1880s. It’s wonderfully uncompromising, sitting like a sentry at the far end of the platform. A squat wodge of nostalgia:

Water way to have a good timeAnother relic of the 1880s is the body of opinion that values this piece of public transport infrastructure, but hates another. I adore them both. It’s great that this water tower survives, but it’s just as great that, while Chesham’s links with Greater London are continually revised and improved, so the same is happening with the south-east and the rest of the UK. Or will do, providing reason prevails over nonsense.

There’s plenty of time to mull these things over when you come to Chesham station. You can’t treat this place like you would the rest of the Underground. There’s no point turning up expecting a train to arrive in the next two or three minutes. Carriages trundle up the single branch line from Chalfont and Latimer every half hour, resting in the platform for a good 10 minutes or so before returning whence they came.

But like Bob Monkhouse and his ever-wonderful Full House, their doors are always open for you, which is extra fortunate if you happen to find yourself in the middle of a snow storm.

The best kind of shelterI’ll return to this corner of the Underground map again, for there’s much to enjoy, even if you have to endure a long ride through lesser parts (Harrow-on-the-Hill, I’m looking at you) to reach it.

Best of all, the Metropolitan line being now wholly-served by a squad of brand-new, uber-slick,  all-in-one bendy trains, the journey is more comfortable than it’s ever been.

If certain attitudes stand still in places like these, at least time doesn’t.

Winter wonderland

76. The original platforms at Baker Street

6 January 2013
Architecture, Circle line, Hammersmith and City line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 1
4 Comments

Illuminating the pastThe tunnel through which the very first Underground train passed 150 years ago this week is, by and large, a dump.

There’s no reason for it not to be. It’s one and a half centuries old. Much of it is in complete darkness. It doesn’t need to look or feel especially reverent. It still does the job for which it was originally built, and that’s all that matters.

Where the tunnel lifts its skirts, as it were, is when it brushes up against the rest of the world. And it does this with the most style, but also the most dignity, at Baker Street.

Baker's treatThere’s something about these platforms that perspires history. Granted, a degree of it is down to contrivance. The place has been done up to show off its heritage. But there’s nothing wrong with illuminating the past, and Baker Street does it literally:

A light, hereApart from stations on the Jubilee line extension, I’ve rarely come across examples of the Underground using artificial light with such precision and thought.

The care that has gone into the presentation of the original platforms at Baker Street is palpable. You feel like someone has, for once, grasped how architecture and artistry can rekindle each other in a constructive, forward-looking fashion.

This place could so easily have taken on the feel of a mausoleum. Antiquities could have been preserved out of duty rather than love. Instead the smell of Victoriana that sidles up your senses the moment you arrive on the platforms is comforting, even reassuring.

The eminence is infectious. I want to linger here, not pay my respects and move on.

To the end of the lineThe drawings and old maps and archive floor plans all help, of course. They sit in the illuminated alcoves, twinkling in the light, making the place feel even more like a living museum. I imagine, or at least I hope, they render the business of waiting for trains a little less tedious. Not that tedium is something I’d be quick to associate with Baker Street (although when I was there to take these photos, somebody was passing the time by doing the electric boogaloo – and rather well, as it happens).

These are only two of the 10 (count ’em) platforms at Baker Street, serving just two of the station’s five lines. But they are the oldest and also the finest. A bit of history gets under your fingernails every time you pass this way. Long may that continue.

150 years young