Architecture Group Meeting

West Wolds u3a Architecture Group held its first meeting on Thursday 30 November 2023. The subject of the first meeting was the Architect Leslie William Green the architect of the London underground, a talk presented by Caroline Foster.

Caroline had researched her subject well and had even undertaken visits to the underground stations including Baker Street, where she and Peter had explored the old station entrances and stairways to the platforms below on a guided tour.

When you picture a London Tube station in your mind, you see the iconic red terracotta tiles and the ornate signs engrained in them. This classic architectural design can be attributed to one man, who was tasked in 1903 with designing over fifty ticket halls for various stations on the Bakerloo, Piccadilly and Northern Lines, that man was Leslie Green. He was born in Maida Vale in 1875, the son of architect and Crown Surveyor, Arthur Green. After finishing university, he worked at his father’s architecture firm before starting his own in 1897.
In 1903, he was appointed as architect for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to design ticket halls for three lines – the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway and the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway which are now known as the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern lines respectively. He designed each station to be flat roofed, so the building could be extended upwards to allow for residential and commercial usage to create more revenue.
Caroline’s talk whetted our group’s appetite to explore and view more closely the stations he designed, when next any of us visit London and travel on the Tube.

The WW u3a Architecture Group meet every other last Thursday of the month at Steve McCarthy’s home at 14:00. We are currently a small group but would welcome anyone sharing our interest in architecture. The next meeting will be on Thursday 25 January 2024 and the subject architectural style will be Early English Gothic. Please contact David Oliver if you wish to attend.