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Zone 3

90. The ticket hall at West Acton

10 March 2013
Architecture, Central line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 3
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Acton artIf there’s one theme above all else that’s come to define this blog, it’s light. The way it bounces through, curves round, dives deep and sidles into the Underground’s heart. The lengths some architects and engineers have gone to coax it into places far from the open air. The magical results achieved by manipulating its power and magnifying its potential.

Light runs counter to almost every association prompted by the word “Underground”. Yet it is responsible for some of the greatest sensations you can experience on the network, both deliberate and by chance. The ticket hall at West Acton would look impressive even without direct sunlight nudging through its neatly-aligned panes. But catch it when the rays are in just the right position, and the effect is glorious – both inside and out:

Go, WestThe elevated windows allow light to pass through in either direction, including on to the platforms which sit behind and below the hall. It’s a simple trick, but with profound consequences: it gives passengers waiting for or getting off trains the added bonus of being bathed in sunshine that might otherwise be obscured by buildings. And if there’s one thing you don’t want on a platform at an Underground station that’s above ground, it’s gloom.

We’ve the Great Western Railway to thank for this, and everything else to be cherished about West Acton, including its eccentric crook-shaped wooden benches and enamel signage. Brian Lewis designed its current incarnation, completed in 1940: a (literal) beacon of light in those dark days.

It’s now Grade II-listed. The inside of the ticket hall isn’t in quite as fine a state as its gleaming exterior. But a slice of sunlight sometimes adds soul to even the shabbiest of rooms.

Goodness, What Radiance!

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

88. The exterior of Bounds Green

2 March 2013
Architecture, Numbers 76-100, Piccadilly line, Zone 3, Zone 4
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Bound for gloryWell now. Here’s a pleasing, solid slice of modernism. It looks in fine fettle, and deservedly so. Bounds Green is another valuable emissary from that otherwise value-strapped decade, the 1930s. If ever you need a tangible reminder of why the second world war was worth fighting, take a trip up the north end of the Piccadilly line.

But while Bounds Green station is an uplifting sensory dispatch from a distinctly downbeat era, and is all the greater for being so, the present day has not been kind. And here’s my problem. Should I be at all bothered about what is taking place at the fringes of this and so many other stunning outposts of the Underground? You’ll see what I mean if I repeat the shot above, but widen the view a little.

A "Bit" of botherGaaaah! It’s not just seeing the word “bits” in the name of shop that depresses me (though only up to a point; the smutty part of me will always associate the word with Kenneth Connor in Carry on Behind who, in response to Elke Sommer announcing “When I love a man, I give him everything, I give it all”, sighs: “But I don’t want it all. I just want a bit!“).

No, it’s also the font. What a horrible, horrible font. I despair at the inelegant, unimaginative lettering.  I bridle at the use of blue on red. And I recoil at the way the ampersand flops and flails about.

To be fair, I’d feel this way on seeing such a font adorning any building. But at the foot of such a gold standard of 20th century style and design is heartbreaking.

Or is it? Should I not treat it as part of the station at all? Or somehow see it yet “not” see it, in a kind of doublethink, as satirised by George Orwell (another valuable emissary from the 1930s)?

Everything's gone GreenThe Underground portions of Bounds Green, both inside and out, are splendid. I say that without reservation.

I just can’t quite get that other font out of my mind, like a bit of grit in my eye. It needles me.

What chance us clubbing together and buying the lease, purely in order to replace that weeping sore of a sign?