| Summary : Underground railway station, opened on 18th August 1924 as the terminus station of the Hampstead Railway's extension from Golders Green. It replaced the nearby terminus of the Edgeware, Highgate and London Railway, which remained in use as a goods station. The extension was one of the first major developments undertaken on the Underground by Frank Pick. The station was built on the Edgware Manor Estate. Around a bus forecourt Stanley Heaps built an impressive station building with flanking wings to the north and south. It was Georgian in character with Portland stone colonnades of coupled Doric columns before the entrances. Detailing of the stonework was kept simple. The main building enclosing the ticket hall was steel-framed with a cladding pf narrow red Dorking bricks. The station building was made more imposing by giving the entrance colonnade its own tiled roof in place of the wrought-iron baliustrade at other stations on the extension, and the general roof line was broken by samll pyramidal roofs at each end of the wings. Roads, shops and houses soon followed, and the first resident of the new estate is reported to have been the novelist ASM Hutchinson. A garage was built close to the station to provide vehicles for the feeder bus service. Despite attempts by the architects to preserve the building intact the balance of the three-sided colonnade was destroyed in 1938 with the demolition of the north wing in preparation for a new station and the line's extension to Bushey Heath, a development halted by the war. The south wing was demolished in 1988 to provide access to a new bus station and garage, and an entrance/exit, designed carefully to match the original entrance, was opened in the south side wall. |