History
The station was opened on 9 September 1874 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District Line) as the western terminus of the railway when it was extended from Earl's Court. In 1877, Hammersmith became a through station when the MDR was extended west to meet the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) at Ravenscourt Park and services over the L&SWR tracks started to Richmond.
On 5 May 1878, the Midland Railway began running a circuitous service known as the Super Outer Circle from St Pancras to Earl's Court via Cricklewood and South Acton on the Dudding Hill Line. It operated over a now disused connection between the North London Railway and the L&SWR Richmond branch. The service was not a success and was ended on 30 September 1880.
On 21 December 1908, the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR, now the Piccadilly Line) opened with Hammersmith as its western terminus.
The opening of the western extension of the Piccadilly Line from 4 July 1932 required the reconstruction of the station at track level to increase the number of platforms to four and much of the station was rebuilt behind the Harry W Ford designed station building on Hammersmith Broadway. Charles Holden designed a secondary entrance for Queen Caroline Street virtually identical to one he designed at the same time for Highgate (now Archway) station, since demolished.
In the early 1990s, the station buildings were demolished along with the neighbouring bus garage and incorporated into a modern shopping centre and Underground and bus interchange. During the redevelopment the designers commissioned to undertake the station's re-design, Minale Tattersfield, salvaged parts of the tiling from the Harry W Ford façade showing the station name and the lines serving it and preserved them. They now form a frame to a decorative mosaic of Hammersmith Bridge in the station's north ticket hall.
Read more about this topic: Hammersmith Tube Station (Piccadilly And District Lines)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)