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Northern line

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.)

70. The escalators at Angel

2 December 2012
Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Objects, Zone 1
2 Comments

Angel, angel, down we go togetherThey’re not quite the longest in western Europe; that honour goes to a station on the Stockholm metro.

They’re not even the longest in the UK, being just a single metre shorter than the wooden ones at the Tyne cyclist and pedestrian tunnel.

They are, however, the longest on the London Underground.

And they might have ended up even longer, were it not for the need to anticipate an interchange, at some point in the increasingly distant future, with the long-proposed Chelsea-Hackney line, hence the (for now) superfluous concourse that stops you being carried all the way down to the platforms in one go.

Nonetheless the escalators at Angel are still a feat to behold and a thrill on which to ascend…

Up-diddly-upand descend…

Down-diddly-downThe strip lighting that runs all the way along each side gives the place a touch of the-future-as-imagined-in-the-mid-1970s, despite being built in the early 1990s. This kind of sensation is always a good thing.

The length of the journey tends to promote good escalator etiquette. This is another boon. People seem to settle down when they realise they’re in for a longer-than-usual ride, and as a result there’s less jostling, prodding and (most heinous of all) STANDING ON THE LEFT.

Then there’s the angle of the escalators. They are so steep that you can’t see the top when you start from the bottom, and vice versa. While this can be exciting, I’m guessing it can also be a bit vertiginous. In which case I would suggest gazing off to the side, where a colourful supply of unchallenging reading matter shuffles by like an ailing rotoscope.

Commercial reignAngel, angel, down we go together.

65. The entrance to Colliers Wood

17 November 2012
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3
1 Comment

Touch WoodFew of the stations that stud the Northern line as it snakes through south London have as much stately grandeur as Colliers Wood.

When the sun catches the entrance, the building feels more of a palace than a portal. It gives off a sort of calming authority, even a coolness, which was certainly welcome on the baking hot day I took these photographs.

Those unfussy yet imposing columns that glide airily up each side of the main window are especially lovely. I like how their width is matched perfectly by the distance between each of the vertical blue lines. And look how the roundel fits so snugly in the middle. You can’t beat symmetry when it’s done properly.

Palace of delightsThen there’s the way the building is positioned on the corner of the street, its sides slanting (never curving – heavens no!) gently inwards, guiding you almost subliminally towards the entrance. Plus you have those two outer, smaller wings of the station, whose reduced stature ensures that nothing jostles for attention with the regal facade, especially when viewed from a distance.

Colliers Wood is one of Charles Holden’s earliest efforts for the Underground, dating from 1926, but it scrubs up well compared with his later masterpieces at Arnos Grove and Gants Hill. That’s as long as people remember to give it a scrub, of course.

And let’s hear it for not one, not two, but three splendidly gleaming roundels, a real help for anyone trying to spy the station from afar, but a real treat for anyone giving it the once over up close.

All hail the red, white and blueThat’s my kind of red, white and blue.