London Under

Yet what if there is no sound? What then? A silent station is a disquieting and even a cursed place. The forty-four disused and forgotten stations of the system are known as “dead stations.” The earth is the place for the dead, is it not?

The passenger travels within the origin of the city. It is a curious fact that the further the train moves from the centre of the city, the more anonymous it becomes. The journey becomes less intense. It becomes less intimate. It loses its mystery.

by nineteenth-century travellers, have gone.

Experienced travellers know the contours of each station, just as a traveller on the surface knows a short cut or a convenient crossroads. They take pleasure in their speed and agility; they know where to stand in order to gain immediate access to the train; they know which carriage stops nearest to an exit. The journey therefore becomes habitual, a part of the traveller’s mental as well as physical history. It becomes a ritual. The wonder and excitement, experienced

Among “them” may be drunks, or beggars, or the mad; even the busker, strumming his or her guitar, may seem to be a threat. That is why most travellers are hurried in the Underground; they wish to arrive at their destination as soon as pos

sible. The Tube system is devoted to finding the shortest route possible between two locations. It is not really a place at all. It is a process of movement and expectation.

Canary Wharf and North Greenwich, designed by Norman Foster and Will Alsop respectively, are triumphs of postmodern engineering.

Griffins were carved into the walls of Aldgate East, St. Paul’s, and other stations; the griffins were the monsters that protected gold mines and buried treasure, and thus suitable creatures to guard the Underground.

When in 1930 the Piccadilly Line began to stretch northwards towards Cockfosters, twenty-two tunnelling shields were mustered for the underground work. In the process some of the most memorable underground stations were built under the influence of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus movement; the bold cylindrical or rectangular shapes, as, for example, at Arnos Grove and Sudbury Town, became instantly recognisable as portals to the underworld.

Comfort could be purchased at a price. By 1910 a sixpenny ticket allowed the traveller access to the first-class carriages of the Metropolitan Railway’s Pullman cars; the carriages contained morocco armchairs set in the replica of a drawing room with mahogany walls. Electric lamps were placed on side-tables, and blinds of green silk covered the windows. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served.