Description of The Building
Like the other stations that Holden designed for London Underground in the 1930s, East Finchley station was at the forefront of British architectural design and took inspiration from European architecture (particularly Dutch) that Holden had seen on trips to the continent during that decade. The track here runs roughly north-west to south-east. The imposing station building, built on rising ground adjacent to the railway bridge over High Road (A1000), has two entrances. The main entrance is at the south-east end of the station. It is on the north-east side of the tracks facing High Road. There is also a smaller, secondary entrance at the north-west end, on the south-west side of the tracks, at the end of an access road called "The Causeway". It is possible to walk through the station from one exit to the other without going onto the platforms.
A strong feature of the station is the semi-circular glazed stairways leading to the enclosed bridge over the tracks occupied by staff offices. These, combined with the station's block-like mass and the narrow deck-like platform buildings, lend the building the atmosphere of a ship. Prominent from the platforms and dominating the main entrance elevation, almost like a ship's figurehead, is a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m) statue by Eric Aumonier of a kneeling archer captured as if having just released an arrow along the railway line towards central London. (The Archer, a local community newspaper, is named after this landmark). The archer is intended to commemorate Finchley's ancient association with hunting in the nearby Royal Forest of Enfield. There is also a pun, in that it faces towards Archway.
Read more about this topic: East Finchley Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the words description of the, description of, description and/or building:
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The limits of prudence: one cannot jump out of a burning building gradually.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)