Inside the Grove
In the ticket hall of Arnos Grove tube station; the object in the centre is a passimeter, a turnstile that also issues tickets.
The station was designed by Charles Holden and opened September, 1932. For six months, Arnos Grove was the terminus of the Piccadilly Line.
"...Arnos Grove station announces its presence in clean-cut, crystal-clear architectural terms. A great glazed and corniced, brick, steel and glass drum sits on top of what is essentially a hollow box made of the same simple and unadorned materials...
...Homely yet magnificent, modest yet capacious, the design of Arnos Grove is a brilliant architectural tightrope act. In London, despite the bravura qualities of some of the stations built in the 1990s for the Jubilee line extension, its design has never been bettered.
When it opened, the station was truly what German art historians would describe as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total and entire work of art. Not only did lettering used throughout the station complement the architecture, so did its benches, lamps, ticket machines and, of course, Harry Beck's underground maps. Adverts on display inside and outside the ticket hall, and along the lengths of its platforms, might be designed by such distinguished graphic artists as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Hans Schleger and Man Ray. Trains that came to serve its platforms included the sleekly purposeful 1938 tube stock designed, at Acton Works, by a team led by W S Graff-Baker, the underground's chief mechanical engineer. By the 1950s, among the buses that met these trains were the RT double-deckers designed, at Chiswick Works, under the direction of Eric Ottaway, Frank Pick's technical officer (buses and coaches). In the 1960s, these superbly proportioned and beautifully engineered double-deckers were joined by the long-lived, and now much missed, Routemasters, the last buses designed and built in London for Londoners.
No detail was too insignificant for Holden, Pick and Arnos Grove station. From 1937, LPTB bus stops, at Arnos Grove as elsewhere, were standardised to a streamlined concrete design adorned with signs by Hans Schleger. Seat fabrics of tube trains and London buses - hardwearing, innovative moquettes - were styled by textile designers such as Enid Marx (1902-1998) and the American-born Marion Dorn (1896-1964). No wonder architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Frank Pick's LPTB as "a civilising agent". No wonder many of us still look at Arnos Grove station today and think, why can't we ensure such high standards of integrated, imaginative, wholly convincing and well-crafted public design today?"
Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic for the Guardian
Inside the Grove
In the ticket hall of Arnos Grove tube station; the object in the centre is a passimeter, a turnstile that also issues tickets.
The station was designed by Charles Holden and opened September, 1932. For six months, Arnos Grove was the terminus of the Piccadilly Line.
"...Arnos Grove station announces its presence in clean-cut, crystal-clear architectural terms. A great glazed and corniced, brick, steel and glass drum sits on top of what is essentially a hollow box made of the same simple and unadorned materials...
...Homely yet magnificent, modest yet capacious, the design of Arnos Grove is a brilliant architectural tightrope act. In London, despite the bravura qualities of some of the stations built in the 1990s for the Jubilee line extension, its design has never been bettered.
When it opened, the station was truly what German art historians would describe as a gesamtkunstwerk, a total and entire work of art. Not only did lettering used throughout the station complement the architecture, so did its benches, lamps, ticket machines and, of course, Harry Beck's underground maps. Adverts on display inside and outside the ticket hall, and along the lengths of its platforms, might be designed by such distinguished graphic artists as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Hans Schleger and Man Ray. Trains that came to serve its platforms included the sleekly purposeful 1938 tube stock designed, at Acton Works, by a team led by W S Graff-Baker, the underground's chief mechanical engineer. By the 1950s, among the buses that met these trains were the RT double-deckers designed, at Chiswick Works, under the direction of Eric Ottaway, Frank Pick's technical officer (buses and coaches). In the 1960s, these superbly proportioned and beautifully engineered double-deckers were joined by the long-lived, and now much missed, Routemasters, the last buses designed and built in London for Londoners.
No detail was too insignificant for Holden, Pick and Arnos Grove station. From 1937, LPTB bus stops, at Arnos Grove as elsewhere, were standardised to a streamlined concrete design adorned with signs by Hans Schleger. Seat fabrics of tube trains and London buses - hardwearing, innovative moquettes - were styled by textile designers such as Enid Marx (1902-1998) and the American-born Marion Dorn (1896-1964). No wonder architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described Frank Pick's LPTB as "a civilising agent". No wonder many of us still look at Arnos Grove station today and think, why can't we ensure such high standards of integrated, imaginative, wholly convincing and well-crafted public design today?"
Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic for the Guardian