Today I went on one of the Hidden London Tours, organised by the London Transport Museum – to 55 Broadway: London’s first skyscraper and London Underground’s iconic headquarters. I’d done another Hidden London Tour (to Downing Street station, where Churchill resided for a period during the Second World War) some time ago, and I can really recommend these tours! So I thought I’d share this as a little interlude between the Australian stories (they will continue, no worries – in fact, there is one that I’ve half written already…)

So, on a grey Saturday afternoon I undertook the journey to St James’s Park underground station, above which the Grade 1 listed building was built:

London Underground hasn’t always been run by a single company like it is currently: it started off as a bunch of individual companies – this is btw the reason why there are still so many stations that are really close to each other: each company had their own station at more or less the same strategic place – until in 1902 the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (known as the Underground Group) was formed.

In the 1920s the Underground Group looked to build a new headquarters, and tasked the famous architect Charles Holden to design a building that would be in line with the Group’s bold vision for the future of London’s public transport.

The result was what is now known as “55 Broadway”. An interesting building… London’s first skyscraper – not in the sense that it is really tall (in fact, St Paul’s Cathedral, built much earlier than 55 Broadway, and is also taller), but in the sense that it has a steel frame, the same way of building as used for the skyscrapers in cities like New York. Oh, and at the time it was the tallest office building… tallest in some way then… And apparently, the council in London responsible for the planning permission, didn’t want it to be a tall, straight building, like the American skyscrapers, that would take away the sunlight (the little bit that London gets…) from the streets and surrounding buildings. This is also one of the reasons that it isn’t a straight building, but rather gets narrower the higher you get:

Another prominent feature is the cruciform (like a cross) shape, a shape mostly used for churches. There are several explanations for why it is this shape: it makes best use of a rather oddly shaped building plot, and it may well be by design, as this allowed the maximum amount of natural light to flood into the building.

Both the exterior and interior show grandeur: the steel frame was faced with high quality Portland stone – the same stone as used to built for instance Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral. Inside there is lots of marble, bronze and walnut panelling, making it a very luxurious office:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

An interesting feature is the mail system:

Apparently from the higher floors letters could be “posted” into the mail chute – note the separate chutes for “London and abroad” and “Country” – which would then be picked up by someone on the ground floor and posted to be sent by Royal Mail.

And what about this for a ceiling…? Think it looks somewhat like railways, don’t you? That’s in the executive office (the pink is most probably not original):

No expense was spared and state of the art was used everywhere. Such as the clocks: synchronised using a big clockwork that was housed in the clock tower at the top of the building:

• 

• 

• 

From the top of the clock tower we had great views over London:

Finally then: the stairs…

• 

• 

• 

• 

Wouldn’t you agree that this suggests that this is the main staircase in the building…? Well, let me tell you… it is actually the fire escape… you know, these stairs that in modern buildings are just very functional, made of concrete, certainly not embellished like these stairs are! But it really is true: that is why the arrows in the bottom photo very helpfully point downwards…! Instead, the main way to get up and down the building was by using one of the four lifts.

All in all – a very interesting tour of a great headquarters. In that time they knew how to build office buildings – they even had (movable) dividers for the offices, rather than the horrible open offices that we have nowadays… yes, I’m a bit jealous of that…