Thursday, August 17, 2006

This is the Station!


This is St. James's Park Station at 55 Broadway. MishMash Bookshop is on the ground floor of the mall inside.

This view is from Tothill Street, and is essentially the view of the approach from Westminster Abbey. Just out of shot on the left is New Scotland Yard, the police station that isn't; and I'm sorry to say that in shot on the extreme right is Basil Spence's horrific brutalist monstrosity 50 Queen Anne's Gate, that was until recently the home of The Home Office. Basil Spence died [of shame no doubt] shortly after it was completed in 1976; and it was that building which prompted Norman St. John Stevas to complain that Spence had now ruined two London parks, having designed the new Buckingham Barracks opposite Hyde Park. Which is probably the one thing I can agree with Lord NStJS about.

By the way you should note how filthy the otherwise stunning 55 Broadway building is. That's because Transport for London are too lazy, mean, stupid and philistine to keep it clean. These headquarters, and the astonishing clarity of their design, once reflected the optimism and pride that the railway pioneers quite rightly had in their project to modernise the very nature of working and living in urban London. And Transport for London have done more to brutalise the legacy of their predecessors than Basil Spence ever did. Thats what I think.....

Andrew Mishmash

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