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34. The old platforms at Highgate

8 July 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 26-50, Zone 3
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Platform? Shoo!Once there were grand plans for Highgate station. Once it was intended to be a spectacular multi-storey interchange, with entrances on three different levels and platforms above and below ground, all housed within a shimmering giant of a building designed by Charles Holden. Once this was to be the hub of the Northern Heights. Once this was to have been very special indeed:

Highgate to heavenInstead, no-one departs and no-one arrives. It is a ghost station. Platforms and buildings survive, but no passenger train has passed this way since 1954.

The desperate poignancy of this location is compounded by the sight and sound of people flocking into that bit of the Highgate interchange that did get finished: the deep-level Underground platforms, from where travellers today have a choice of two, but only two, destinations: north to East Finchley or south to Archway.

Once you could catch a train from this place to five other destinations. Now, if you want a connection to Cranley Gardens, or Muswell Hill, or Alexandra Palace, or Crouch End, or Stroud Green, you must look elsewhere. The nerves and sinews of the railway network at Highgate have snapped and decayed; the infrastructure is still, wistfully, maddeningly, intact:

The last train has already departedTrains first came through here in 1867. The Underground arrived in 1939. But so did the second world war, along with matters more pressing than the realisation of a triple-decked suburban transport interchange.

What we’re left with today is the top and bottom layers of that triple-decked sandwich, but no middle. There is a gaping hole. You enter or exit Highgate station above the disused platforms, then – via steps (down) or escalator (up) – pass directly over and around them to get to or from the deep-level Underground.

But you can see them – quite well, as it happens, though you can’t get quite near enough to enjoy a clear view.

And there is one unexpected treat. The former entrance to the station, along with the cottage once belonging to the stationmaster, is beautifully maintained and tended:

Station masteryLife, of sorts, still goes on at old Highgate station. And I must say, I’m rather glad.

A rockery runs through it

33. The viaduct at Arnos Grove

6 July 2012
Architecture, Numbers 26-50, Piccadilly line, Zone 4
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I dream my dreams awayWhen the Piccadilly line was being extended northwards from Finsbury Park to Cockfosters in the early 1930s, the planners faced the challenge of how to get round, get over, or even avoid completely the Pymmes Brook valley. It being the early 1930s, however, this was seen not so much as a vexatious conundrum but a delightful problem meriting an equally spirited solution.

This turned out to be an absolutely enormous viaduct made of 34 arches, opened in 1933 and an instant architectural landmark. It’s still breathtaking today, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the suburban idyll suggested in the initial marketing:

Bridge of sighsFor one thing it’s not nearly that high:

A river runs through itNor is it possible to get that clear a view of the trains passing overhead:

Southbound trainHowever you can wander at will among the magnificently imposing and meticulously aligned arches, whose nooks and crevices conjure up a deceptively never-ending maze of brickwork:

A maze, amazingIt is also, like its cousin in the Dollis Brook valley, an Underground highlight that’s not best appreciated when you’re actually on the Underground. You need to leave the train, indeed leave the station and network entirely, to savour the viaduct’s full splendour. Which it’s well worth doing, even if the reality doesn’t quite match the artist’s impression. But then when does it ever?

The real thing

27. The interior of Oakwood

13 June 2012
Architecture, Numbers 26-50, Piccadilly line, Zone 5
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Knock on OakwoodBy way of illustrating who wins in a Holden v Green contest, here’s an example of the former’s architectural genius just a few stops up the Piccadilly line from the latter’s Caledonian Road.

The inside of Oakwood, which opened in 1933, is a vast, dazzling playground of modernist design.

The building is, frankly, enormous, the sort more common to a mainline station than a mere metropolitan network. Those excitingly mammoth windows pictured above send natural light pouring into the sleek and spacious booking hall, in turn creating all sorts of bewitching shadows and illuminations.

Then there’s the ceiling, a giant’s crochet of great hunks of cement, perched on top of massive walls of clean, crisp, perfect-aligned brickwork. There’s no need for ornamentation or extra decoration or even much in the way of colour. The station’s design creates its own beauty. Nothing more needs to be added.

Well, except for one neatly-positioned, charmingly-crafted clock:

Sign o'the timeThe scale and ambition of the place caught my breath. I stopped in my tracks when I walked in, stunned by what was around me. I tried to linger as long as I could before inviting suspicion from passengers and staff, none of whom seemed to be lifting their eyes a few feet above the ground.

A shame, because we are blessed and incredibly flattered by buildings like this. Apologies for sounding painfully preachy, but it feels, well, really quite humbling that someone thought it worth bestowing so much love and attention on such as ostensibly functional assignment.

Three cheers for Charles Holden!

(And I haven’t even started on the exterior of Oakwood… not to mention the platforms…)

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