St. James's Park tube station

St James's Park is a London Underground station by St James's Park in the City of Westminster. It is served by the District and Circle Lines and is between Victoria and Westminster stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

The station building is incorporated into 55 Broadway, the headquarters of London Underground and has entrances from Broadway, Petty France and Palmer Street. The station is close to the Home Office and New Scotland Yard. The station is not wheelchair accessible.

History

The station was opened on 24 December 1868 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District Line) when the company opened the first section of its line between South Kensington and Westminster stations. The MDR connected to the Metropolitan Railway (MR, later the Metropolitan Line) at South Kensington and, although the two companies were rivals, each company operated its trains over the other's tracks in a joint service known as the "Inner Circle".

On 1 February 1872, the MDR opened a northbound branch from its station at Earl's Court to connect to the West London Extension Joint Railway (WLEJR, now the West London Line) which it connected to at Addison Road (now Kensington (Olympia)). From that date the "Outer Circle" service began running over the MDR's tracks. The service was run by the North London Railway (NLR) from its terminus at Broad Street (now demolished) in the City of London via the North London Line to Willesden Junction, then the West London Line to Addison Road and the MDR to Mansion House - the new eastern terminus of the MDR.

From 1 August 1872, the "Middle Circle" service also began operations through St James's Park running from Moorgate along the MR's tracks on the north side of the Inner Circle to Paddington then over the Hammersmith & City Railway (H&CR) track to Latimer Road then, via a now demolished link, to the West London Line to Addison Road and the MDR to Mansion House. The service was operated jointly by the H&CR and the MDR.

On 30 June 1900, the Middle Circle service was withdrawn between Earl's Court and Mansion House. On 31 December 1908 the Outer Circle service was also withdrawn.The station has been reconstructed twice. In the first decade of the 20th century the original MDR station was reconstructed in conjunction with the building of Electric Railway House a headquarters building for the MDR's owners the London Electric Railway. The station was then rebuilt again between 1927 and 1929 as part of the construction of 55 Broadway the company's new headquarters building designed by Charles Holden and featuring statues and carved stone panels including ones by Sir Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, and Henry Moore.

The platforms feature the green, blue, black and white tiling scheme first used for the reconstruction and extension to Morden of the City & South London Railway (now the Northern Line) also designed by Holden and opened between 1924 and 1926.

In 1949, the Metropolitan Line operated Inner Circle route was given its own identity on the tube map as the Circle Line.

The separate Palmer Street entrance and booking hall were rebuilt as part of a further redevelopment in the 1960s.

Name

For much of its history the station name has been spelled differently than now. Illustrating changing practice in punctuation, tube maps up to the early 1930s show the name as "St. James' Park". From Harry Beck's first map in 1933 until the early 1950s the name was shown as "St. James Park". Since the 1950s it has had the current name.cite web
url= http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clivebillson/tube/tube.html
accessdate= 2008-09-04
title= A History of the London Tube Maps]

Originally installed in the late 1920s when the first version of the name was in use, the station name displayed in the platform roundels exhibit modification to account for this change. One of the roundels on the eastbound platform still reads "St. James' Park", the rest have had new name plates affixed giving the current spelling and punctuation, "St. James's Park".

Gallery

References

External links

* [http://photos.ltmcollection.org/ London's Transport Museum Photographic Archive]
** ltmcollection|26/9890026.jpg|Newly built Petty France entrance with Electric Railway House above, 1910
** ltmcollection|39/9859039.jpg|Palmer Street entrance, 1916
** ltmcollection|65/9911265.jpg|Petty France entrance, 1922
** ltmcollection|oh/i0000doh.jpg|Broadway Entrance, 1929
** ltmcollection|78/9910978.jpg|Booking hall, 1932
** ltmcollection|22/9859022.jpg|Petty France entrance, 1935
** ltmcollection|sq/i0000dsq.jpg|Corner entrance to 55 Broadway, originally entrance to offices only, 1949
** ltmcollection|74/9889274.jpg|Internal circulation area, 1953
** ltmcollection|s4/i0000ds4.jpg|Palmer Street entrance, 1966
* [http://www.london-underground.de/gallery/Aldgate-Gloucester-Road/st_james_s_park_roundel_1 Beary's Underground - St James's Park signage]

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