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Designs

91. The archive posters at Hanger Lane

24 March 2013
Central line, Designs, Numbers 76-100, Zone 3
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Hues of the worldI appreciate the interlacing tarmac tendrils of Hanger Lane might not get everyone gyrating with pleasure.

The road network has been branded the scariest of its kind in the country, though I’m not sure something that pre-advertises its risks in such public and self-evident a fashion can be properly blamed for giving you the willies. (Daunting is probably a better label.) There’s a noisy concentration of movement going on, but you can’t say you’re not warned. The grumble and velocity of traffic are palpable thousands of metres before you reach the junction itself.

And then right in the middle of this tombola of motorisation sits an Underground station.

It looks at first sight, from a distance, utterly inaccessible and unloved.

But you should press onwards and nearer, towards the heart of the melee, for you’ll be directed down one of a number of subways, along the walls of which you’ll find a string of pre-gyratory pin-ups.

Like this:

Brightest LondonRepresentations of the Underground have shaped our perception of the network far more than actual journeys on actual trains. Shapes, symbols and colours have educated and enlightened the country, if not the whole world, since the early 1900s. Most people will never see, let alone ride on, an Underground train. But most people know of the sensation. They know the palette, the aesthetic geography. They know how it must feel.

And we have posters to thank for that. Posters that are rightly being commemorated in this 150th anniversary year just as much as the infrastructure.

I think some of them number among the greatest works of art of the 20th century, but then you knew I’d say that. You can see and judge for yourself at Hanger Lane station, where a selection of them stud the underpasses in the form of sensibly wipe-clean tile-based reproductions.

Go, West(ern Extension)!They’re all labelled, giving the artist their proper credit along with the year of publication. And they’re not just the most well-known ones. You’ll find less ubiquitous efforts, like “Autumn Hues” (at the top of this blog), which seems to be promoting easy access to poisonous fungi and “decay”, albeit tastefully drawn.

And befitting the location, there’s a nod to other, cruder modes of transport:

Life and how to live itFrom a purely selfish point of view, this display allows the likes of me to photograph and reproduce material I suspect TfL and/or the London Transport Museum guards with a roundel-shaped branding iron.

From a more selfless point of view, it’s wonderful that these colourful splashes of heritage continue to have a place in the present, available to all to see, touch and explore: history’s hangers-on at Hanger Lane.

89. The old roundels at Ealing Broadway

8 March 2013
Central line, Designs, District line, Numbers 76-100, Objects, Zone 3
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The power of 'EalingI’ve gone on before about how, just because something is old, doesn’t mean it automatically has value. There’s no point preserving absolutely everything just for the sake of it. It’s not practical, for one thing. What earthly use would be Underground stations done up to operate like they did in the past, but expected to cope with the volume of passengers in the present?

A lot of what was truly old on the Underground was truly awful, and thank heavens it no longer exists. Traces linger in picture form, and that’s where they belong, as warnings from history.

The old roundels at Ealing Broadway are different, though. They’re quite clearly not right, in the sense of not resembling what they would in short order be superseded with. But it’s right they exist, as they’re a reminder of how art and design can evolve for the better. They’re waymarkers on a journey that ends in splendour.

Mark Ovenden dates these as belonging to the first half of the 1910s, a few years before Edward Johnston developed the typeface that led to the present-day roundel being registered as a trademark in 1917.

Two can be found on the District line platforms at Ealing Broadway, and are easy to locate and photograph. Even earlier examples are tucked away in corners of Covent Garden and Caledonian Road.

They’re all a bit ungainly, ill-formed and trying to be grown up: the Underground in adolescence. But they capture a thought process working itself out in the public gaze – one that deserves to be preserved within a 21st century Underground network that continues to work itself out in (almost always) constructive, creative ways.

These roundels are worth keeping for the inspiration they continue to provide today, here, right now. For they aren’t aesthetic dead ends. They’re fascinating stumbles towards genius.

Forget 1940. Rejoice in the Broadway melody of 1915!

http://bit.ly/VRfWVp

87. The motifs by High Street Kensington

25 February 2013
Circle line, Designs, District line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 1
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Much ReveredMuch of the first incarnation of the Underground, like that of Doctor Who, was enthusiastically wiped from existence by subsequent generations of management bigwigs.

In both cases, I’m not especially sorry. Those traces that survive of either institution reveal a rather overbearing, eccentric style that’s also massively fusty and profoundly inelegant. Only the stuff that lurked slightly out-of-sight was really that good.

Fortunately, unlike Doctor Who, bits of the first incarnation of the Underground don’t keep turning up in someone’s attic or in Zimbabwe.

High Street Kensington was first thrown up in 1868 as an enormous pile of pretension. Victorian railway architecture can be maddeningly inconsistent. How could they get the likes of King’s Cross and St Pancras so right, but something like this so wrong?

Thankfully it didn’t survive, regenerating in the first decade of the 20th century to become… a shopping arcade. But wait, because just above the entrance to the station, up in the ceiling, are some attractive motifs commemorating the change. Both the Metropolitan (pictured above) and District railways are honoured:

Definitely ReveredAlong with the year of the renovation:

It was a very good yearAnything like this, with the right dosage of peculiarity and charm to catch people’s eye and make them stop and stare, is a good thing. The motifs add a bit of substance to the otherwise wispy atmosphere of the arcade. If even one person has cause to ponder for a moment on the meaning of MR, DR or the significance of 1906, a job of work has been done.

As for the station looking bigger on the inside than the outside… hasn’t the Underground always had plenty of time for relative dimensions in space?

High's treat