| Summary : Covent Garden was not quite finished for the opening of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway in 1906, and was opened on 11 April 1907, on the site of a former bakery. The need to house the lift machinery in an accessible position dictated the layout of the street-level building. The architect Leslie Green devised a standard layout for the station buildings on this section of tube which was then adapted to suit the shape of the Covent Garden site. The large ground floor housed the ticket office, staff accommodation and the lift upper landings, whilst the mezzanine floor, which housed the lift motors and winding and control gear, had large glazed arches. There are three closely spaced arched windows along Long Acre, above the entrance, and three widely spaced ones along St James's Street above the exit. The structure was of steel clothed in brick, faced on the street elevations with glazed ruby-red terracotta blocks known as faience. The ticket hall was originally tiled in green up to shoulder height, white above and the ticket office windows had moulded tile surrounds in the Art Nouveau style. |