History
The station was opened on 10 March 1906 by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (now the Bakerloo line) with the platforms of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (now the Piccadilly line) being opened on 15 December 1906. As originally built it had, like other stations, a surface booking hall (designed, like many in central London built at that time, by Leslie Green). The development of traffic before and after World War I meant that the need for improved station facilities was acute - in 1907 1.5 million passengers used the station, by 1922 it had grown to 18 million passengers. It was decided to construct a sub-surface booking hall and circulating area, which would also provide public pedestrian subways. Work began in February 1925 and was completed in 1928. The architect was Charles Holden and the builder was John Mowlem & Co: the whole complex cost more than half-a-million pounds. Eleven escalators were provided in two flights, leading to the two lines serving the station. Above these escalators was once a mural by artist Stephen Bone, showing the world with London at its centre. This mural was later replaced by advertising.
The old station building designed by Leslie Green finally closed for traffic on 21 July 1929, it was demolished in the 1980s when the large building on the corner of Jermyn Street, Piccadilly and Haymarket was constructed.
The Bakerloo line platforms at Piccadilly Circus offer a unique view on the network: the back to back layout is itself unusual, but the single tunnel containing a crossover at the north end of the station allows passengers to see both platforms at once. This station can act as an intermediate terminus for southbound Bakerloo Line trains.
The station is heavily featured in the 1986 video for Press by Paul McCartney. McCartney is seen walking boldly, proudly and with supreme confidence around the station, elegantly catching a tube train and speaking with excited members of the general public on their own level. Along with Bond Street, the station is a popular pilgrimage site for McCartney fans keen to reenact the video, that is now regarded as one of music video's defining moments, known amongst fans as 'McPressing'. In 2006 a total of 76 Brazilian fans 'McPressed' at the same time, breaking the previous record by 11 people set by Oxford Brookes University students in 1991.
Read more about this topic: Piccadilly Circus Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)