History
The station opened on 24 November 1879 on the Metropolitan Railway (later the Metropolitan Line). From 20 November 1939 it also served the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo Line, with Met services being withdrawn the following year. It transferred to the Jubilee Line in 1979. The station still has platforms on the Metropolitan line, but these are not in regular use and are only used when the Jubilee line is not serving the station due to planned engineering works or severe service disruption.
The main station buildings, which date from the reconstruction of 1925, are fine examples of the work of C W Clark, the Metropolitan Railway's architect, who used this style of marble white faience for several 'central' area stations. The ticket hall interior, which retains much of the original green tesserae mosaic tiling, is a rare survival and was one of the reasons that led to the station being made a Grade 2 Listed Building in December 2006.
Willesden Green is one of the few stations on the southern section of the former Metropolitan Mainline to still have its original platform buildings intact and its architecture is typical for a station serving a medium sized town. Baker Street and Neasden are the other stations to have its platform buildings intact. The line between Finchley Road and Harrow-on-the-Hill was quadrupled between 1914–1916, and many intermediate stations had to be rebuilt to enable the fast lines to be built.
A goods yard, which was in use until 1966, was located to the north of the station. From 1933, when the London Transport took over service, trains from the north would be run by the LNER to LT Neasden works where they would be then hauled by LT steam locos to Willesden.
There are frequent Jubilee Line trains from central London, some of which terminate at Willesden Green.
Read more about this topic: Willesden Green Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)