 A poster advertising the Morden extension. Image from London Transport Museum Collection. Charles Holden’s work on the Piccadilly Line for London Transport produced some of the first and finest public modernist buildings in Britain. From the early stations at Ealing Common and Hounslow West, through to his first ‘box’ at Sudbury Town and onto his work along the Cockfosters extensions, Holden redefined the tube station bringing modernity to the suburbs. Holden had been recruited in the early 1920s by Frank Pick, at that point with the Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL), to design a new set of stations for the extension of what would become the Northern Line to Morden. At the time the line was part of the City and South London railway, one of the lines bought up by the UERL in its expansionist period, and earmarked for extension to try and increase passenger numbers.  A poster showing the building of the new line. Image from London Transport Museum Collection. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1923 to extend the line from Clapham Common to Morden, with an additional plan to build a surface rail to connect Morden with Sutton. This section was cancelled after an agreement couldn't be found with Southern Railways who had the rights to the train services there. Holden was tasked with designing seven new stations and a depot at Morden. Tunnelling for the 5 mile extension began on 31st December 1923 and took until September 1926. When completed, this section was the longest underground railway in the world. The stations for this stretch of line were Holden’s first complete group, although he had designed new entrances for Westminster and Clapham Common previously. Taking influence from the ideas of earlier tube architect Leslie Green, who had used a standard design that could be replicated at various sites, Holden devised a facade in three sections that could be adapted to any plot. Holden had the facade to be used at Clapham South built as a mock up in timber for inspection by the UERL directors at Earl’s Court exhibition centre.  The mock up station entrance to Clapham South, built at Earls Court. Image from London Transport Museum. Unlike most of the later stations on the Piccadilly Line extensions, these new station buildings had to fit into an already existing urban fabric. Clapham South became part of the street parade along Balham Hill, initially as a standalone station, with an apartment block, Westbury Court, appearing over and around the station a few years later. This concept of selling the air rights to a building for development was common with a number of early tube stations, especially along the Central London Railway, at stations like Queensway, and was used at Morden on this extension. The next two stations on the line, Balham and Tooting Bec (opened as Trinity Road), each have two separate entrances, allowing access to passengers at busy road junctions. Tooting Broadway and South Wimbledon both have curved facades that fit into their respective street parades, a contrast to the other stations where the three part screens are angled. Colliers Wood has an angled facade with one street entrance.  An early sketch by Charles Holden for South Wimbledon station. Image from RIBApix. The stations were built in brick with Portland Stone facades, all with large central windows to allow light into the ticket hall. These windows were decorated with coloured roundels, with all signage in the stations in Johnston font, a first step in harmonizing the visual identity of the underground, or UndergrounD as the station signs had it. Inside, the ticket halls were illuminated by ironwork art deco chandeliers, and were spacious and finished in a simple palette. Illumination was a large part of the new design. The stations were to act as adverts for the underground service at night, with light projectioning through the ticket hall windows with the roundel in the centre.The passageways and platform areas had tilework designed by Harold Stabler, with a mixture of white, green, grey and mauve.  One entrance at Trinity Road station (later renamed Tooting Bec). Image from RIBApix. The modernity and clean lines of the Morden extension stations presented a clear contrast with those built for the other end of this railway, between Brent Cross and Edgware. These had been opened in 1923, only 3 years before the extension from Clapham Common, but were very different in approach, designed by the company's in-house architect Stanley Heaps in a quietly suburban manner, with pantiled roofs and colonnaded entrances. Indeed, Heaps’ department produced some designs for the Morden extension, very much in the vein of the Edgware section, with Neo-Georgian frontages. The UERL decided to go with the new spirit of the age, and the Morden extension stations opened on 13th September 1926 (apart from Balham which did not open until 6th December due to a labour dispute). Holden would go on to refine this station design at Hounslow West and Ealing Common, before moving onto to his Sudbury Box and then to the Cockfosters extension stations, and the Morden extension stations go on carrying passengers 100 years after they first headed south for the first time.
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 The subdued facade of the Muswell Hill Odeon. Image from RIBApix. The Odeon cinema at Muswell Hill opened on 9th September 1936, with the first film shown being “Educated Evans”, starring Max Miller, a now lost piece of cinema heritage. Luckily for us, this cinema is not lost. On the contrary, unlike many cinemas of its era, it is still showing films as part of the Everyman chain. The cinema sits on Fortis Green Road, part of an interwar parade, all designed by architect George Coles. Coles, born in Leyton in 1884, had trained as an architect, going into partnership with Percy Adams in 1912, before setting up in practice himself in 1925. He designed cinemas for the Gaumont chain, later becoming architect for Odeon. The chain had been founded in 1928 by Oscar Deutsch, and from 1930 began opening cinemas with the Odeon brand. A number of architects designed for the chain including Harry Weedon and Andrew Mather, with Coles designing cinemas for them from 1933.  The auditorium at Muswell Hill Odeon. Image from RIBApix. The Muswell Hill neighbourhood had been home to two early cinemas, the Atheneum Picture Playhouse on Fortis Green Road and the Summerlands Electric Theatre, both from the start of the 20th century. Cinema design had changed since the early days of the silver screen, with chains employing architects to produce fantastical buildings that borrowed freely from around the world, hence many suburban streets were home to cinemas dressed up as Chinese pagoda (such as Coles’ Himalayan Palace in Southall), Moorish temples and Egyptian palaces. This outlandish approach was not welcomed by the respectable neighbourhood of Muswell Hill, especially the church of St. James, opposite the new site, and so Coles designed a pared down facade for the new cinema. The cinema's entrance curves around a corner, clad in cream faience tiles in the centre and black tiles either side. The ODEON sign originally sat just above the wooden doorways, in rather small letters compared to some other cinemas of its period.  The foyer with the central ticket booth. Image from RIBApix. Inside, a more expressive design was used. The foyer is double height, with horizontal streamlined decoration moving around the room, creating dynamic visual rhythm. The original ticket office was an octagonal booth in the centre of the foyer, placed inside a circular decoration on the floor. Two tall pillars flank the bottom of the stairs to the upper tiers, and the dynamic motif is carried through to the auditorium where lines along the ceiling arrive at the screen, designed to resemble a roll of film. The side walls of the auditorium also have horizontal decoration running around the perimeter, and there are octagonal clocks over the exit doors. At the same time Coles was designing the cinema for Muswell Hill, he was also producing the Odeon cinema in Ipswich, which opened the same day and featured a similar design for its interior.  The auditorium seen from the lower seats. Image from Historic England. The ABC chain also opened a cinema in Muswell Hill in 1936, just three months after the Odeon opened. The Ritz was designed by the chain’s in-house architect, William R. Glen, and located a few minutes from the George Coles cinema. The Ritz closed down in 1978 and was demolished two years later. The Odeon cinema operated for just under 80 years. In 1974 two more screens were added under the balcony, and in March 1984 the building was Grade II listed. The cinema was purchased by the Everyman chain in April 2015, along with Odeon’s in Gerrards Cross, Esher and Barnet. Some internal changes have taken place but it stillI remains showing films to this day. The Muswell Hill cinema and many others are featured in A Guide to Modernism in Metro-Land. Available to order HERE
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