| Summary : Wood Green Underground station, opened on 19th September 1932 to serve the Piccadilly Line. The station was designed by Charles Holden to fit a corner site in a parade of shops, and the street frontage, with its large area of brickwork and narrow band of windows, was considered a suitable treatment for the difficult curved and sloping site. Ventilation towers were placed at each end of the roof; these were built the same height, but the left-hand one has subsequently been extended. Slabs of Cornish granite were used to face the ground floor exterior and interior walls. The ticket hall was laid out to an elliptical plan, with an exhibition space at the rear (which saw little use). The vertical face of the ring beam was cast with a stepped pattern. The central portion of the rear wall was set back to mirror the position of the main window: quoins and jambs of the window and set-back were faced in orange-red sandfaced bricks, with brown-grey bricks for the rest of the walls. In 1988 a new booking office was constructed against the back wall of the ticket hall. The tunnels at Wood Green were lined to give an elliptical profile enabling furniture and equipment to be recessed without disturbing the general line and also lessening the distortion of posters on the walls. Wall surfaces were finished with biscuit-cream tiles, relived by narrow bands of green and cream tiles around the archways, tunnel mouth and recesses, and with further bands along the platform and trackside. |