User:Cassianto/sandbox2



Leslie William Green (6 February 1875 – 31 August 1908) was an English architect who specialised in the design of train stations for the London Underground during the first decade of the 20th century.

He was responsible for the designs of no fewer than 28 Underground stations on what are today the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern lines.

His designs, all in the Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style), are distinctive for their use of oxblood glazed tiles to the facade, red faïence blocks, pillars and semi-circular first-floor windows, and patterned, tiled interiors. The flat roof design purposely enabled development to take place above and over the building. Inside, the platforms featured geometric patterns with the station names written in large, pre-Johnston typeface.

Born in London, Green studied in London and Paris before moving to his father's practice in the mid-1890s.

His total designs total around 50 buildings,

was originally commissioned He was responsible for the designs of no fewer than 28 Underground stations on what are today the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern Lines, placing him very much in the pantheon with Holden when it comes to station design.

He was made a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1907.

Green died of tuberculosis aged 33 in 1908. The historian and writer, Mike Paterson, who authored Green's entry on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, considered Green's early death to be a factor in his relative obscurity when compared to Charles Holden, another prolific, albeit much later, designer for the London Underground.

Historic England have listed 10 of Green's stations on the National Heritage List for England.

One of the reasons for Green’s relative obscurity is perhaps the fact that he died of tuberculosis in 1908 at the tragically young age of 33, having been made a fellow of RIBA the previous year in the wake of his greatest achievement. He was responsible for the designs of no fewer than 28 Underground stations on what are today the Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern Lines, placing him very much in the pantheon with Holden when it comes to station design.

Early life
Green was born in 1875 at 99 Portsdown Road, Maida Vale. He was the eldest of four children, born to the architect Arthur William Green (1850–1904), who later became the surveyor to the Crown Estate, and his wife, Emily Ann (1847–1899). The family lived in relative affluence which enabled Arthur to send his eldest son into private education; in 1889, aged 13, Green enrolled at Dover College, where he studied for two years. At the end of 1891 he passed the preliminary examination for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and put his educational achievements into practice by joining his father's architectural office, simultaneously studying at the South Kensington School of Art. In 1894 he travelled to Paris for a further year's study before returning to London in late 1895 to become an assistant to his father in his father's practice. Green qualified for a RIBA studentship in 1897 and passed his associate examination the following year; he was elected a RIBA member in 1899.

By 1900 Green had already started to establish himself as an architect in his own right. That year he set up his office at 19 Haymarket; three years later had moved to an office in Adam Street, Strand, from where he practiced until his death.

Early life
Green was born in 1875 at 99 Portsdown Road, Maida Vale. He was the eldest of four children, born to the architect Arthur William Green (1850–1904), who later became the surveyor to the Crown Estate, and his wife, Emily Ann (1847–1899). The family lived in relative affluence which enabled Arthur to send his eldest son into private education; in 1889, aged 13, Green enrolled at Dover College, where he studied for two years. He formed an interest in architecture as a child and by the end of 1891 had passed the preliminary examination for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He put his educational achievements into practice when he joined his father's architectural office in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. He simultaneously studied at the South Kensington School of Art, and in 1894, travelled to Paris for a further year's study before returning to London in late 1895 to become an assistant to his father. Green qualified for a RIBA studentship in 1897 and passed his associate examination the following year; he was elected a RIBA member in 1899. By 1900 Green had already started to establish himself as an architect in his own right. That year he set up his office at 19 Haymarket, before moving to a premises in Adam Street, Strand, three years later, where he practiced until his death.

Green's early work as an independent architect involved the ‘remodelling’ of several London properties—at 81 Portland Place, 28 Sussex Square, and 26 Kensington Palace Gardens—and the construction of a residential block on the corner of St James's Street and Pall Mall. On 5 April 1902, at St Saviour's Church, Clapham, he married Mildred Ethel Wildy (bap. 1879, d. 1960), daughter of John William Wildy, a clerk at Coutts Bank. The couple had a daughter, Vera (1904–1995). In September 1903 Green's career changed dramatically when he was appointed architect to the Underground Electric Railway Company of London (UERL). This company had resulted from the acquisition and merger by the American speculator and public transport financier Charles Tyson Yerkes of three existing tube companies which equate closely to sections of what became the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, and Northern lines. Green's firm was contracted—for £2000 per annum plus expenses—to design more than fifty new station buildings for the UERL, including the interior fittings and décor. He set to work alongside the railway company's incumbent architect, Harry Wharton Ford, and was responsible for a series of distinctive stations built, to a broadly standard design, in north and south London. Green's steel- framed buildings were two storeys to accommodate the superstructure required for the lifts and were designed to allow extra storeys to be added for offices or living space by later developers. Most of Green's surviving Underground stations—of which Belsize Park, Caledonian Road, Chalk Farm, Covent Garden, Elephant and Castle, Hampstead, Gloucester Road, and Russell Square are among notable examples—are instantly recognizable from the outside, and also often from the inside. In almost every case the station's exterior was decorated with glazed terracotta tiles, known as faïence, of a distinctive ox-blood red, or sang de boeuf, colouring. The tiles were supplied, along with decorative mouldings in the same material, by the Leeds Fireclay Company. A notable exception to the standard ox-blood façade was Holborn station, where his design was determined by local planning regulations. Green's stations comprised discrete bays on the ground floor which provided entrances and exits, and also accommodated small shops. Each bay was topped out on the first floor level with a semi-circular arched window, sometimes (as at Russell Square) interspersed with oculi. The two levels were divided by a broad white strip which carried the station's name in a bold all-capital typeface with a clear art nouveau influence. At street level the station interiors were given over to ticket halls, decorated in glazed white tiles interspersed by dark green tiling in horizontal patterns. Ticket booths and lift entrances had decorative tile surrounds, while many stairwells and foot tunnels included strips of moulded dark-green flowers or acanthus and pomegranate leaves. Station clocks were supplied to a standard design by New York's Self- Winding Clock Company, many of them still in use in the early twenty-first century. Green's original contract stipulated that he was responsible for new station buildings above ground. However, as he stated in his application to the RIBA fellowship in 1907, he also undertook 'the Decorative works to Station Tunnels, Platforms & Passages', and a separate contract was drawn up to cover this work (RIBA BAL). Opinion is divided as to exactly how much of this was undertaken by Green and his company. However, the designs closely followed his preferences, with heavy use of coloured glazed tiling in geometric patterns and parallel lines, mainly along the platforms. Platform tiling was also used for directional signage, and for the station name—rendered in the same bold typeface as on the exterior, and punctuated with distinctive colons and semi-colons. The result was a clear and consistent aesthetic statement, though one that derived as much from practical considerations of cost, uniformity, speed of construction, and maintenance. Green's use of glazed tiling, for example, made for easy cleaning and— more than a century on—many London Underground workers continue to admire the hardiness and quality of his stations. In June 1907 Green was informed that his contract with UERL would cease at the end of the year, though he was awarded a £750 retainer thereafter for other work. This proved irrelevant since his health was then in serious decline, most probably exacerbated by his huge workload over a three-year period. He was admitted to a sanatorium at Mundesley-on-Sea, Norfolk, where he died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 31 August 1908. He was survived by his daughter and his wife, who married Henry Boyle, an anaesthetist, in 1910. From 1908 responsibility for the station building programme passed to Green's assistant Stanley Heaps (1880–1962) who continued the work over the next decade. While bearing the hallmarks of Green's earlier buildings, stations such as Kilburn Park and Maida Vale (both 1915) are by Heaps. Stations constructed after Green's death saw some modifications, most notably from 1911 with the first installation of escalators instead of lifts, which allowed later buildings to be one rather than two storeys in height. A small number of Green's stations were destroyed by wartime bombing or closed in the twentieth century —Brompton Road, Down Street, and Aldwych being well-known ‘ghost stations’. The majority that remain have stood the test of time, with changes—mainly interior, and sometimes extensive—being a response to technical innovations such as escalators and automatic ticket barriers. With its three original ticket booths, Holloway Road remains the most complete example of a Leslie Green station. Later architectural critics gave a mixed response to Green's work. In the modernist heyday of Charles Holden some transport executives were openly hostile, and in 1942 Nikolaus Pevsner damned the stations with faint praise, acknowledging that the 'feeling for architectural responsibility was there ... but with nobody to satisfy it according to highest standards of the day' (quoted in Menear, 46). By contrast, recent critics have proved more appreciative of buildings that have become familiar environments for travellers and a characteristic feature of London streetscapes. With its entrance arches and red tiling, the fictitious station of Walford East, for example—a location for the BBC television soap opera EastEnders—is clearly modelled on Green's Edwardian design.

Leslie formed an interest in architecture as a child and upon passing his preliminary examinations in 1891, became apprenticed to his father, whose practice was based in Suffolk Street, Pall Mall. Between 1893–4, Green enrolled at South Kensington School of Art before moving to Paris to complete a further year at a secondary art college.

Green returned to his father's practice in 1895 and became his assistant, taking on his own designs for commissions including a block of flats in Buckingham Palace Road and the Pall Mall Safety Deposit building in Barlby Road, North Kensington.

Green set up his own practice in 1897 and was appointed the in-house architect for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) in 1903.

Green complained of failing health in 1905, made worse by the stressful undertaking of the UERL project,

In 1907 he could no longer continue. He died in 1908 at the age of 33 in Mundesley, Norfolk.

=

Green was born in Maida Vale, London in 1875, the second of four children of architect and Crown Surveyor Arthur Green and his wife Emily. He spent periods studying at Dover College and South Kensington School of Art, and in Paris, between periods working as an assistant in his father's architectural practice. Green married Mildred Ethel Wildy (1879–1960) in Clapham in April 1902. In 1904, they had a daughter, Vera (1904–1995).

Career
Green established his own practice as an architect in 1897, working initially from his father's offices, before moving to Haymarket in 1900 and then to Adelphi House on Adam Street, by the Strand, in 1903. He became an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 1898, and a member in 1899. Early commissions included works to homes and shops in various parts of the capital city.

In 1903 he was appointed as architect for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) to design stations for three underground railway lines then under construction – the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR), the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR) and the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE&HR), which, respectively, became parts of the present day Piccadilly line, Bakerloo line and Northern line. Green was commissioned to design 50 new stations, including their external appearance, and internal fittings and decoration.

Green developed a unique Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style) style for the ground level station buildings, adapted to suit the individual station location. They were constructed as two-storey buildings with a structural steel frame – then a new form of construction recently imported from the United States – providing the large internal spaces needed for ticket halls and lift shafts (the first escalators were introduced in 1911). The exterior elevations were clad in non-loadbearing ox-blood red (sang de boeuf) glazed terracotta (faïence) blocks, provided by the Burmantofts Pottery. The ground floor was divided into wide bays by columns, allowing separate entrances and exits, and also providing space for retail outlets. The design also featured large semi-circular windows at first floor level (occasionally with circular oculi) and a heavy dentilated cornice above. A broad strip between the two floors announced the name of the station in capital letters. The station buildings were constructed with flat roofs with the deliberate aim of encouraging commercial office development above, another benefit of the load-bearing structural steel frame.

The interior was tiled in green and white, with decorative details. At platform level, the stations were provided with a standardised tiling design incorporating the station name, but with quickly identified individual colour schemes and geometric tile patterns formed in repeating panels along the platform length. Directional signs were also included in the tile designs. The tiled surfaces created a unifying theme, and proved easy to maintain.

The railways were to open in 1906 and 1907, and Green was notified in June 1907 that the contract would be terminated at the end of that year. He was elected a Fellow of the RIBA in 1907, including details of his work for the UERL as part of his submission.

Many of Green's station buildings survive, although internal modifications have seen most of his ticket hall designs altered to suit later developments. At platform levels a number of the original tiling schemes survive today or have, as at Lambeth North and Marylebone, been reproduced in recent years to the original pattern. A number of the surviving buildings are Grade II listed buildings: Aldwych, Belsize Park, Caledonian Road, Chalk Farm, Covent Garden, Gloucester Road, Holloway Road, Oxford Circus, Mornington Crescent, Russell Square and South Kensington. His work was continued by his assistant, Stanley Heaps. The designs remain instantly recognisable: the screen appearance of the fictitious Walford East Underground station from the BBC soap opera EastEnders is inspired by Green's designs.

Death
Green contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and died on 31 August 1908 at a sanatorium in Mundesley-on-Sea, Norfolk.