Leslie Green

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Baker Street & Waterloo Railway station building at Oxford Circus showing typical glazed terra cotta façade and commercial development above.

Lambeth North station without commercial development above.

Unique tilework at Russell Square station typical of Leslie Green stations.

For the philosopher of law, see Leslie Green (philosopher).

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Leslie William Green (1875—1908) was an English architect known for his design of iconic stations constructed on the London Underground railway system in central London during the first decade of the 20th century.

[edit] Works

He worked for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Ltd on stations for three underground lines — the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway (GNP&BR), the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR), which, respectively, became parts of the present day Piccadilly Line, Bakerloo Line and Northern Line.

The ground level station buildings were designed to a uniform style adapted to suit the individual station location. They were constructed as two-storey buildings with a structural steel frame — then a new form of construction recently imported from the United States. The steel frames provided the large internal spaces needed for ticket halls and lift shafts. They were clad in non-loadbearing ox-blood red glazed terracotta blocks, with the ground floor divided into wide bays by columns and featured large semi-circular windows at first floor level and a heavy dentilated cornice above.

The station buildings were constructed with flat roofs with the deliberate aim of encouraging commercial office development above, another benefit of the load bearing structural steel frame. Many of the surviving buildings are listed.

At platform level, the stations were provided with a standardised tiling design incorporating the station name, but with quickly identified individual colour schemes and unique geometric tile patterns formed in repeating panels along the platform length. Many of these tiling schemes survive today or have, as at Lambeth North and Marylebone, been reproduced in recent years to the original pattern.

[edit] Examples of existing Leslie Green stations

For complete lists of central London stations of these lines see Bakerloo Line, Piccadilly Line and Northern Line.

[edit] External links

(Images from the Photographic Archive of London's Transport Museum )

[edit] Further reading

• Leboff, David (2002). The Underground Stations of Leslie Green. Harrow Weald, Middlesex: Capital Transport. ISBN 1-85414-255-0.
• www.dougrose.co.uk - an extensive site dedicated to the decorative tiling of all Leslie Green stations