Tube Stations
Metro-Land itself sprang from the expansion of the Metropolitan railway into the fields north-west of London, so it is perhaps fitting that some of it’s most iconic Modernist buildings are Tube Stations. The early wooden platforms gave way to new buildings influenced by the modernist stations of Germany and Holland as seen first hand by architect Charles Holden and London Underground chief Frank Pick. Their trip of 1930 led to the adoption of a total design aesthetic on the underground that took in everything from stations, to trains to signage.
Holden had previously produced austere Art Deco influenced buildings on the Northern line Modern extension of 1924, but his Piccadilly line buildings were the mostly clearly Modernist buildings he had produced, and came to become beacons of style in the new suburbs. Holden was not the only architect involved in designing these stations, and architects such as C.H. James, Felix Lander and Herbert Welch all contributed. After WW2, the Central line stations of Brian James and F.F.C. Curtis, took up the baton of Modernist design started by Holden in Metro-Land.
Holden had previously produced austere Art Deco influenced buildings on the Northern line Modern extension of 1924, but his Piccadilly line buildings were the mostly clearly Modernist buildings he had produced, and came to become beacons of style in the new suburbs. Holden was not the only architect involved in designing these stations, and architects such as C.H. James, Felix Lander and Herbert Welch all contributed. After WW2, the Central line stations of Brian James and F.F.C. Curtis, took up the baton of Modernist design started by Holden in Metro-Land.
