LONDON UNDERGROUND ARCHITECTURE: HOW THREE ARCHITECTS SHAPED THE TUBE

The London Underground is not only the oldest metro system in the world; it is one of the great patrons of design in British history. Across more than 160 years, the stations that bring the network up to the street have been shaped by a remarkable succession of architects, each giving the Tube a new visual language for a new age — from the cut-and-cover pioneers of the Victorian era, through the oxblood-faience house style of the Edwardian deep-tube boom, to the brick-and-concrete modernism of the 1930s that made London Transport a byword for good design the world over.

This guide tells that story through three stations modelled by Chisel & Mouse, each the work of a different architect and a different era: Leslie Green's Mornington Crescent (1907), Charles W. Clark's Farringdon (1923), and Charles Holden's Sudbury Town (1931). Together they trace the whole arc of Underground architecture — Art Nouveau to classicism to modernism — in three buildings you can hold in your hand.

  • Written by Gavin Paisley, director & model-maker at Chisel & Mouse based in East Sussex, England.
  • Last updated: 26-Jun-26

Photograph by Jonas Magnus Lystad, licensed under CC A-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Farringdon Station facade architectural scale model

The London Underground architectural model collection

Chisel & Mouse models three of the Underground's most distinctive station buildings, each a sculpture of the main façade, hand-cast in fine plaster with etched-brass detailing in our West Sussex studio:

Each station is explored in its own guide, linked below.

The world's first underground railway

The story begins at Farringdon. On 10 January 1863, the Metropolitan Railway opened the world's first underground passenger railway, running between Paddington and Farringdon beneath the New Road, built by the "cut-and-cover" method and worked at first by steam locomotives in gas-lit tunnels. It was an immediate success, carrying nearly ten million passengers in its first year, and it began the transformation of London into a city that lived and moved underground. Farringdon was its eastern terminus, and the site remains, in that sense, the birthplace of the entire global metro idea.

Over the following decades the network grew in fits and starts — the District Railway, then, from 1890, the deep-level electric "tube" lines bored far below the streets. Each wave of expansion brought new stations, and each generation of stations brought a new architecture.

The first house style: Leslie Green's oxblood stations

The great Edwardian tube boom was driven by the American financier Charles Yerkes and his Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL), which between 1903 and 1907 built three new deep-level lines at once. To give them a coherent identity, the UERL appointed a young architect, Leslie Green (1875–1908), to design some fifty station buildings — and Green created one of the first true corporate house styles in British architecture.

His stations are unmistakable: two-storey buildings on a steel frame, clad in glossy oxblood-red (sang-de-bœuf) glazed faience, with wide ground-floor bays, great semicircular first-floor windows, and the station name in a white faience band across the front. The steel frame and flat roof were deliberate, allowing offices to be built above. The style was Modern Style — the British strain of Art Nouveau — and it gave the Edwardian Underground a warm, glowing, instantly recognisable face. Green drove himself into an early grave producing them, dying at just 33.

Mornington Crescent (1907) is one of the finest survivors. Read its full story in our Mornington Crescent Station architecture guide.

Photograph by Dietmar Rabich, licensed under CC A-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Metropolitan's grand manner: Charles W. Clark

The original Metropolitan Railway developed an architecture all its own. Its 1920s rebuilding programme was led by Charles Walter Clark, the company's architect, who gave the Met a dignified, broadly Classical house style faced in pale, ivory-coloured faience with metal lettering — a world away from Green's oxblood tube stations. Clark rebuilt Baker Street and Paddington before the First World War, and in 1923 gave Farringdon the handsome, well-preserved frontage on Cowcross Street that survives today. He would go on to design the luxurious Chiltern Court flats above Baker Street.

That the Metropolitan's birthplace should carry one of its most elegant buildings is fitting. Read more in our Farringdon Station architecture guide.

The modern revolution: Frank Pick and Charles Holden

The Underground's most celebrated architecture came in the interwar years, from the partnership of one client and one architect: Frank Pick and Charles Holden (1875–1960). Pick, the visionary manager who ran the Underground's design programme, believed that good design was good business, and in Holden he found an architect who shared his conviction that form should follow function and that ornament should be stripped away.

In 1930 the two toured Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden together, studying the latest modern architecture. The result, when the Piccadilly line was extended, was a wholly new kind of station: clean, functional compositions of brick, concrete, and glass. Sudbury Town, the first to be rebuilt, in 1931, set the template — a tall brick "box" with a flat reinforced-concrete "lid," flooded with light through tall glazed panels. Holden cheerfully called his stations "brick boxes with concrete lids," and they remain among the most admired modern buildings in Britain. Read more in our Sudbury Town Station architecture guide.

Frank Pick and the Underground as a patron of design

The stations were only part of a far larger vision. Under Frank Pick, the Underground became the most comprehensive design programme in Britain — a single, coherent identity applied to everything the system touched. Pick commissioned the roundel, the bar-and-circle symbol still used today; the Johnston typeface, designed by Edward Johnston in 1916 and still in use in updated form; Harry Beck's revolutionary diagrammatic Tube map of 1931; and a celebrated series of posters by leading artists of the day. He crowned the programme with Holden's headquarters at 55 Broadway (1929), studded with avant-garde sculpture by Epstein, Gill, and Moore.

Together, Pick's architecture, typography, cartography, and graphics made the London Underground one of the most influential design achievements of the twentieth century — proof that a public service could also be a work of art.

The model-maker's lens

  • Focus — each model captures the main street-level façade, the public face of the station: Green's oxblood arches, Clark's classical frontage, Holden's brick-and-glass box.
  • Detail — etched-brass window frames and railings pick out the fine detail against the plaster; the contrast between the three styles is the whole pleasure of the set.
  • How they read at small scale — beautifully; these are buildings of strong, clear form and surface, which is exactly what translates to plaster and brass.
  • How to display — as a trio, the three eras of Underground design side by side: Art Nouveau, Classical, and Modernist, telling the story of the Tube in three buildings.

Explore the models: Mornington Crescent, Farringdon, and Sudbury Town.

Frequently asked questions about London Underground architecture

Who designed the London Underground's stations?

Many architects shaped the Underground, but three stand out: Leslie Green, who created the oxblood-faience house style of the Edwardian tube stations (1903–07); Charles W. Clark, architect to the Metropolitan Railway, who gave it a classical style in the 1920s; and Charles Holden, who, with Frank Pick, designed the celebrated modernist stations of the 1920s and 1930s.

What is the oldest London Underground station?

The Underground began on 10 January 1863, when the Metropolitan Railway opened the world's first underground passenger railway between Paddington and Farringdon. Farringdon was the eastern terminus of that original line, making it one of the most historically significant stations in the world.

Why are some Tube stations dark red?

The distinctive oxblood-red (sang-de-bœuf) glazed faience stations were designed by Leslie Green for the Underground Electric Railways Company of London between 1903 and 1907. The glossy red terracotta blocks formed a recognisable house style across some fifty stations, including Mornington Crescent and Covent Garden.

Who was Frank Pick?

Frank Pick ran the Underground's design programme in the interwar years and made it one of the great patrons of modern design. He commissioned the roundel, the Johnston typeface, Harry Beck's Tube map, the poster programme, and Charles Holden's modernist stations.

What are Charles Holden's "brick boxes with concrete lids"?

It was Holden's own phrase for the modernist stations he designed for the Underground in the 1930s — simple, functional buildings of brick, concrete, and glass. Sudbury Town (1931) was the first and set the template for many that followed on the Piccadilly line.

Which Underground stations are listed buildings?

Dozens of Underground station buildings are listed. Among the three in this guide, Mornington Crescent is Grade II listed and Sudbury Town is Grade II* listed; Farringdon's 1920s building is a notably well-preserved example of Metropolitan Railway architecture.

Related architectural landmarks

You may also be interested in:

Sources and further reading