Day 131 of 366: Southgate

I spent another most enjoyable evening at a camera club, this time Southgate Photographic Society. It never ceases to amaze me how many people out there have the same or similar outlook on photography and life in general. It is always such a pleasure to spend some time with like-minded people. I also got a chance to photograph the famous Southgate underground station. It is a beautifully designed building which definitely deserves at least one more visit.

Here are a few facts from Wikipedia:

The station is built in the Art Deco/Streamline Moderne design style and is one of the best known of the many stations Charles Holden designed for London Underground. The station building is circular with a flat projecting concrete roof. Externally, the flat roof of the raised central section appears, impossibly, to be supported by nothing more than a horizontal band of windows that provide daylight to the ticket hall. The roof is actually supported, umbrella-like, from a central column within the ticket hall. The whole building is topped by an illuminated feature resembling a Tesla coil.

Like Arnos Grove, Oakwood and Cockfosters, Southgate is a listed building and retains much of its original decoration. The two escalators have the original column lighting, while bronze panelling is in evidence throughout the station.

The preserved condition of the station's original features, particularly the escalators, makes Southgate popular for filming scenes for period dramas, including scenes for the 1999 version of the film The End of the Affair.

Southgate

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