please empty your brain below |
Love the 'new Euston' brochure: brilliant in every way. The Grill Room could be from 2009... |
I wish people could write about the Euston Arch without feeling compelled to stick the knife into what replaced it. It's a massively underappreciated building. |
Not for the first time in the past seven days I had a good idea of what todays blog would be about and was right again. You always seem to be able to find out so much more than I ever manage. I was too young to remember its demolition but even as a young boy I do remember the controversy and disbelief that it was allowed to happen in the name of progress and without any formal public consultation. Its demolition was not in vain. It finally woke Londoners up to what would happen if we didn't protest and object to what was being destroyed. I am convinced that without its barbaric destruction St Pancras would never have survived. The good thing is that in the case of the Doric Arch we can rebuild it and put right a dreadful wrong. I for one look forward to seeing it again in its rightful place. |
Well that explains the name of the pub on the Euston Road that I visited on Saturday. |
Somebody watched the news last night, didn't he? |
The thing was, the Arch was *not* demolished to 'make way' for the new Euston station. It stood between the two lodges which still survive, fronting right onto the Euston Road. The station building is about 200m further back, behind the gardens, the gloomy bus station and that awful windswept concrete plaza. I do agree with Graham however; the 1960s Euston building is one of the best '60s buildings in London (OK, I admit most of the rest are dire or have already been demolished (eg Paternoster Square)). It is light and airy and (despite the best efforts of Railtrack [RIP] to fill it with sock shops and other tat) uncluttered and easy to get around. The only reason the Arch went was because it was 'old' and therefore did not fit into the BRB's brand image for the shiny new electrified West Coast Main Line. |
Ken, I'm afraid you're very much mistaken. The Arch was much much further back from the road, right in the middle of what is now the platform area. The old Euston was spectacularly inefficient in terms of how much of its land was actually available for platforms. |
Yes, the Arch was indeed slap bang in the middle of the current station area. The space between the two lodges (which I think are themselves quite attractive ) certainly looks like it should have been where the Arch once was and I'm sure I've seen proposals to resurrect it there. |
...including the proposal DG links in the last para of his post. Which would be quite fun, in a St Pancras-style old-vs-new way. Getting rid of the thing wasn't vandalism, though: it was completely in the way of any attempt to turn Euston into a usable station. Which I'd have to agree with Graham, succeeded admirably. I love the fact that even back in 1837, the L&BR's main priority was to build an epic arch as branding, while not actually creating a decent station until 15 years later. Plus ca change, etc. |
There must have been sunspots or something about the 1960's that inspired city planners to lay waste to the past. Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan was similarly ripped down to give the world Madison Square Garden. I blame it all on the Frank Lloyd Wright mindset and the insane flight to simplification... scorning traditional architectural embellishment. |
I for one have to admit I had not fully grasped the significance of its original location. However the links show that even in the early sixties it was thought possible to move it. And if they could dismantle and rebuild London Bridge on the other side of the world a few years later then it shouldn't have been too hard a challenge to rebuild the arch so that it did not get in the way of the station rebuilding. In the early sixties nearly every building was black due to pollution and as such they represented the dreary foreboding image of a London living in the past that many people at that time were determined to eliminate. It was only a few years later when the clean air acts had taken full effect and they had started to clean up the existing buildings that most people woke up to the fact that these eyesores were potential objects of beauty and magnificence. |
What a lovely arch. It'll look so right between the lodges, which are just crying out for it. What a wonderful post. I'm going to feel happy all day now. |
So it's just me who finds the current Euston a soulless box and a Godforsakenly awful place to catch a train then? Not quite as bad as Birmingham New Street admittedly, but even so.... If that's one of London's best 60s buildings, it speaks volumes about the standard of 60s design. |
There's a lot of modern architecture I like, an awful lot. However, Euston Station, is an abomination. The worse kind of 60's/70's vandalism, poor design and cheap nasty workmanship. See also Edmonton Green Shopping Centre and, just up the road from Euston, Camden Town (Town) Hall extension. These buldings are so horrible they can only be appreciated, perversely, for their rank ugliness. |
I don't think I've ever caught a mainline train from Euston (though I have from Watford Junction). I tend to stick to Waterloo and Liverpool Street instead, which have managed to keep much of their Victorian splendour I feel. Isn't the Euston Arch represented on the tilework on Euston's Victoria Line platforms? I've seen pictures of it on the web, and I think it'll be great if they reconstructed it in front of the station, even though you may have a clash of architectural designs with the main sixties concourse. |
@Ned, @Johnny: from the outside, Euston is ming; from the inside, it works better (in terms of passenger flows, waiting areas, and general functional design) than any other UK station. |
Fascinating - and the stones didn't go far, either. As well as the stuff dumped in Bow, "Paradise Villa" ain't even in Kent. It's at Sundridge Park, according to the Arch trust website - just north of Bromley. I also didn't realise how far back the arch was - Euston's just functional dullness now and it's hard to imagine anything with much splendour around there now. |
According to Dan Cruickshank's TV programme, Paradise Villa is in Kent. Maybe that's because Bromley was in Kent when the stones were dumped. Or maybe he's a historian, not a geographer. |
Design of Euston station? Very mixed. The bus station is pointless. For people not getting off at Euston, it really delays the journey. During the rush hour, once buses get in, they can't get out again. For walkers, the station is too far back. Even worse, when you get in there, its another long walk to get to any trains, especially if they are leaving from the left side of the station. On the other hand, the station is essentially a closed box, which does mean it stays nice and warm during the winter. In most other terminals, you freeze. A better design would have brought the platforms as far forward as possible, and put the waiting areas on top of them. There are some bad stations in London in terms of layout, Kings Cross is particularly dire, but I wouldn't rate Euston particularly highly. Peerhaps some stations seem to work less well because they are busier. Liverpool Street and Waterloo both seem to work very well. |
Euston works fine if you get there by Tube, it's an excellent example of integrated transport and (even at the times of day I tend to use it at the moment) is a pleasure to use. The other loss at Euston is the Great Hall, of course, but the whole layout dated from a time when no one really knew how to build a city centre terminal because no one ever had before. It's not surprising they made something of a ricketts of it. Most of the buildings lost in the rebuilding were dross. Interesting someone brought up Liverpool Street, which is a sympathetic rebuilding/restoration from the 1990s which actually managed to lose quite a lot of the old station without anyone noticing (the left hand side of the facade is a facsimile of the original building which was a good bit further back) and Waterloo, which isn't Victorian at all but an early 20th Century attempt to do much what BR did at Euston, only in a classical style. There are definite echoes in the Euston layout. |
The current Euston has a decent departure hall, but it is way too far from the platforms. The platforms are dull low claustrophobic and ugly as sin. There is a good reason why the train shed at Liverpool St was rebuilt, and at St Pancras was restored. They are uplifting spaces. The building blocks and frontages of Euston are ugly and confused. You would at least have thought when they rebuilt the mess that was there before they would have at least got the 60s clean lines and efficiency model half right! As a kid I thought it an oppressive building, quite an achievement for such a high ceilinged building. The descent to the platforms scared me. Agree with person above who reckons Waterloo works. It does. And a nice light airy space to boot. So a rebuild is necessary to make the thing work properly. And whilst you are at it, put the arch back to nod at the fact that once upon a time we built impressive things just for the sake of it. |
that Robson mock-up link with the arch between the two lodges looks beautiful and inviting! |
Never mind the Arch, can we have the 1960s Euston concourse back please? Remove that vile shanty town of KnickerBoxes, information kiosks and such like and give us back that lovely clear open space. Architecture = the effective enclosure of space. |
Interesting to read all the posted comments on here. I have recently been trying to research the "Old" Euston. Plenty of pictures of The Doric Arch and The Great Hall, but I would really like to try and find some pictures of the concourse area. Have a number taken from the concourse facing towards Watford, mostly of platforms 1-6, but would like to see what the interior of the concourse looked like. Also can anyone help me as to where I could find a detailed description of "Old" Euston, its facilities, layout and entrances to The Underground (Of course only The Northern Line existed then, The Victoria Line being invented at about the same time that the "New" Euston opened in 1968 ). |
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