Baker Street Station: Main Entrance Building And Metropolitan, Circle And Hammersmith And City Line Platforms (Nos 1-6) Including Retaining Wall To Approach Road

Baker Street Station is an underground railway station and terminus of exceptional architectural and historic interest. The first station on this site was erected in 1863 by the Metropolitan Railway to the design of Sir John Fowler, Engineer in Chief of the Metropolitan Railway, of which a pair of platforms and vault survive. Two platforms were added to the north serving the Metropolitan Railway Extension in 1868, subsequently extended to four. The station was extensively remodelled between 1911 and 1913 by Charles W Clark, Chief Architectural Assistant to the Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway, W Willox, and refurbished in 1985.

The building is of steel-frame construction with reinforced concrete floors, the façade clad in Portland stone. The station entrance building comprises the ground floor of the three-bay centrepiece of Chiltern Court, plus the four adjacent bays to the east, standing one storey above basement with an upper mezzanine level. The entrance in the west bay leads down stairs to a large rectangular booking hall, with offices to the east. The original sub-surface platforms of 1863, now serving the Circle and Hammersmith & City Lines as platforms 5 and 6, run east-west parallel with the station frontage beneath Marylebone Road. A stair on the south side of the booking hall leads down through a lower concourse to the eastbound platform, whilst the westbound platform is accessed by a bridge to the left of the stair. Stairs to either side of the west end of the platforms probably date from 1863, though that on the south side has been more altered. A linking bridge between them was added in 1911, and in front of this is a bridge built in 1966-7; both bridges are linked to the modern ticket hall on the south side of Marylebone Road. Platforms 1 to 4, serving the Metropolitan Line, are accessed by stairs on the north side of the booking hall.

The classical frontage comprises seven tall arched bays with rusticated voussoirs. The central bay of the three projecting western bays has a heavy keystone and cornucopian devices to left and right inscribed 'MR' and '1912', with paired narrow windows to either side. The door to the left has a shouldered architrave inscribed 'LUGGAGE'. The bay to the right, originally an exit, is now infilled with a shop, as are the four bays to the east.

Inside, the entrance stair lobby is clad in biscuit-coloured faience with roundels. A secondary entrance arch with rusticated voussoirs and keystone bears an elaborate cornucopian device with Metropolitan Railway insignia and the date 1912. Above is a round-headed window with moulded architrave. The booking hall ceiling is coffered with a grid of beams, some straight and others segmental, which are panelled on the faces and soffits and carried on square faience-clad piers with panelled faces and a dentilled cyma cornice. Faience signs on the south wall for 'WH Smith and Son' and 'Luncheon and Tearoom' were restored in 1985. The walls are clad in biscuit-coloured faience. The stairs down to the eastbound platform have a timber handrail and iron balustrade. The entrance to the lower concourse has a cast-iron screen with glazed overthrow bearing illuminated names of eastbound stations on the outer face and westbound stations on the inner, surmounted by a clock. This was installed in 1925 to control passenger flow during the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley and is a distinctive feature of the London Underground. Inset in a tall niche in the wall to the right is a marble First World War memorial to the fallen of the Metropolitan Railway, comprising a tablet set within Ionic columns and surmounted by a sculpture of a lion destroying a serpent, erected by the Directors, Officers and Staff of the Company and designed by Charles Clark.

The platforms were altered at the east end between 1911 and 1913. The eastbound platform is entered through a three-bay segmental arcade with faience-clad columns; the platform vault has been breached at this point by a three-bay section of jack-arches. Beyond, the platforms are covered by the 1863 broad segmental buff-brick barrel vault of 16 main bays, each with a deep lunette set into the flanks and clad internally in modern white tiles. The vault soffit was repaired in 1985, matching the original. There are footbridges to the east and west ends. The east footbridge is lined with glazed brick faience tiling, incorporating an oculus inscribed 'MR', probably a remodelling of an earlier bridge, possibly from 1868. The 1911 footbridge at the west end, of reinforced concrete, has a segmental rusticated arch and also retains internal tiling, as does the stair on the north side. Behind this is the 1863 tunnel portal with roll-moulded arch. Remains of the basement of the 1863 entrance building survive behind the north staircase.

The stairs to the Metropolitan Line platforms on the north side of the booking hall are lined with timber panelling and covered by a pitched glazed roof. The platform structures date from 1911 to 1913, with steel awnings and renewed timber scalloped valances carried on faience-clad pillars similar to those of the booking hall. One cast-iron lamp standard remains. A restored faience sign advertises Chiltern Court as 'London's New Restaurant'. Iron railings and an overthrow with geometric pattern enclose the stair well to the Bakerloo and Jubilee lines.

The retaining wall to the ramped station approach road, built between 1911 and 1913, was an integral part of the station and hotel design and originally had a porte-cochère. It is faced in Portland stone with channelled rustication and is arcaded with keyed semi-circular openings with heavy iron grilles, six to either side of the centrepiece which has channelled piers with cornices flanking two further arches, themselves flanking a memorial. This carries, on the central panel, a bronze plaque recording: 'THIS STONE WAS LAID BY THE HON. LORD ABERCONWAY DC / CHAIRMAN OF THE METROPOLITAN RAILWAY COMPANY 24 JULY 1912 / R H SELBIE GENERAL MANAGER W WILLOX M.I.C.E. ENGINEER'. This is flanked by wreaths and fasces and has a lion's head above with a ramped cornice overall. The railings have been removed. To the west is a small triangular rusticated stone pavilion, built in 1930 as an entrance to the Metropolitan Line platforms via an existing stair.

In 1854 an Act of Parliament was passed enabling the Metropolitan Railway to construct an underground railway between Paddington and the City, as part of an envisaged 'Inner Circle' linking the mainline stations, to be completed in conjunction with the Metropolitan Railway's collaborator, later arch-rival, the Metropolitan District Railway, inaugurated in 1864. This was the world's first underground railway, constructed between 1860 and 1863 under the supervision of Sir John Fowler, the Metropolitan Railway's Engineer in Chief, from Paddington, Bishop's Road, now Paddington, and Farringdon Street, now Farringdon, with intermediate stations at Edgware Road, Baker Street, Portland Road, now Great Portland Street, Gower Street, now Euston Square, and King's Cross. The railway was constructed on the 'cut-and-cover' system whereby a trench is excavated and roofed over, a method employed until the 1890s when it was superseded by the deep tube system for electrified trains. Both broad and standard-gauge track were laid.

The original Metropolitan Railway station surface buildings were relatively modest, single-storey Italianate buildings in brick and stucco and none survives other than as fragmentary remains. Of the seven, Paddington, Edgware Road, King's Cross and Farringdon had platforms in open cuttings flanked by brick retaining walls covered by conventional iron-and-glass roofs, while Gower Street, Great Portland Street and Baker Street had sub-surface platforms covered by a brick barrel vault lit by globe gaslights; these latter stations were thus the first true 'underground' stations. At Baker Street and Gower Street, which were virtually identical, lighting was supplemented by a series of deep lunettes pierced through the vault, lined with white glazed tiles, each of which had a thick glass cover at surface level with ventilation apertures, enclosed by railings. No more of these sub-surface platforms were built due to the noxious atmosphere from steam and gases.

Baker Street station opened on 10 January 1863, comprising a pair of one-storey buildings on the north and south corners of Marylebone Road and Baker Street, each containing a booking office and stairs down to the west end of the platforms. In 1868, two surface-level platforms opened on the north side to serve an extension to Swiss Cottage, later extended to four, with a link to the existing line. From here the line, known as the 'Metropolitan Extension', was incrementally extended north-westwards into Middlesex, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, reaching Aylesbury and Verney Junction in 1892, some 50 miles from central London. Branch lines were opened from Harrow to Uxbridge in 1904, Moor Park to Watford in 1925, and finally Wembley Park to Stanmore in 1932. The Metropolitan Railway absorbed the Hammersmith & City Railway in 1867 and opened a new branch from Edgware Road to South Kensington in 1868. The Metropolitan Railway also operated trains on the London and South Western Railway line to Richmond by 1877. The original line was extended to Moorgate in 1865, Bishopsgate, now Liverpool Street, in 1875, and Aldgate in 1876. Meanwhile, the remainder of the Inner Circle was constructed by the Metropolitan District Railway from South Kensington in 1868 to Tower Hill in 1884. The Baker Street & Waterloo Railway, later the Bakerloo Line, opened its station at Baker Street on 10 March 1906, which stood to the northwest of the Metropolitan Railway station, interlinked to it by a subway. It was demolished in the 1960s.

The Metropolitan Railway deliberately cultivated the image of a mainline company, which in effect it was. The line was electrified by 1907, and in 1911 the Metropolitan Railway embarked on a comprehensive rebuilding programme in which Baker Street was to be its new company headquarters and flagship station. This was prompted not only by increasing congestion but also the drive to exploit suburban expansion to the northwest. Here, the Metropolitan Railway enjoyed a uniquely privileged position whereby it was legally enabled to retain surplus land it had acquired for railway development in the late 19th century. Thus was born 'Metro-land', the term coined by the Metropolitan Railway's publicity department in 1915 and used henceforth in Metropolitan Railway marketing, which rapidly entered common parlance as an idealised evocation of northwest London commuterland. Baker Street Station was the 'Gateway to Metro-land'.

The new station was designed by Charles Walter Clark (1885-1972), appointed Chief Architectural Assistant to the Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway in 1910 and Architect in 1921. It was intended to form part of the ground floor of a large five-storey, 15-bay hotel carried on a tall rusticated-arcaded ground floor, approached by a long ramp. The station comprised a grand booking hall and concourse at basement level with a ladies' room, buffet, lost property office and WH Smith bookstall among the facilities, providing a modern service comparable to that of a mainline station. To the east were offices, a parcels office and a goods entrance. The Metropolitan Railway Extension platforms were remodelled, and to the northeast in Allsop Place an imposing new Metropolitan Railway headquarters was built to Clark's design. Building ceased on the outbreak of the First World War, and the hotel proposal was superseded by a scheme for mansion flats, named Chiltern Court, designed by Clark in 1927 and completed in 1929.

The Metropolitan Railway remained fiercely independent until 1932, having resisted absorption into 'the Combine' which dominated underground railway construction in London until the 1930s. In 1933 the Combine, the Metropolitan Railway and all bus and tram networks were merged into the London Passenger Transport Board, an unsubsidised public corporation, and the Metropolitan Railway network became the Metropolitan Line. In 1939, Bakerloo trains took over the Metropolitan Line service to Stanmore. Another entrance was formed further to the west in Chiltern House around 1939, linked to the Metropolitan Line booking hall by a corridor. In 1979 the new Jubilee Line took over the Baker Street to Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo line and added an extra northbound platform. In 1990 the section of the Metropolitan Line from Baker Street to Hammersmith became part of the newly-created, or recreated, Hammersmith & City Line.

Baker Street Station is designated at Grade II* because the 'cut-and-cover' platform vault of 1863 is of major architectural and historic interest as the most complete of only three such sub-surface platforms constructed on the original sequence of stations of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground railway. Dramatically pierced by shafts of light from the deep lunettes, it is one of the most evocative and enduring images of London's early underground system. The 1911 to 1913 remodelling by Charles W Clark is of more than special interest, most notably for the entrance and booking hall, which are the grandest on the Underground, as befitted the chief station of the Metropolitan Railway and 'Gateway to Metro-land'. The retaining wall to the station approach road, an integral part of the original station and hotel concept, is an impressive piece of streetscape which illustrates the Metropolitan Railway's grand aspirations for Baker Street, and has strong group value with the station frontage.