The extraordinary thing (as far as this blog is concerned, anyway) about Buckingham Palace Road is t

Long distance coach travel is the forgotten part of British public transport. In many mainland European countries regional coaches are an essential and integrated part of the public transport network. In Britain they are a low-cost alternative to train travel car rentals liberia costa rica for those who don t mind considerably slower journeys (that ll be students and retired people, then), or the solution where a train service doesn t exist. There are some exceptions which prove the rule (like London-Oxford coach services) but in general the state of British long distance coaches car rentals liberia costa rica can be judged by the failure of First Group s attempt to launch its Greyhound brand here. Not to mention that coach travel has a profile in the popular car rentals liberia costa rica media which is even worse than train travel car rentals liberia costa rica , which is saying something.
As a result, there isn t a lot of good coach-related car rentals liberia costa rica design car rentals liberia costa rica around in Britain, and what there is tends to date from the early part of the twentieth century, when coach travel was a bit more mainstream than it seems to be now.
Foremost amongst coach-related transport design is London s Victoria Coach Station. To be strictly accurate, we re talking about the departures building of Victoria Coach Station here, which is where all the waiting rooms, little shops, and information systems are gathered. There s a completely separate and essentially nondescript arrivals building on the other side of Elizabeth Street which need not detain us here.
The main entrance (which is at 45° to the roads on which the coach station stands) is at the foot of a stepped central tower, set slightly further back. Three vertical recesses centrally on the tower contain metal-framed windows and detailing. Two wings, running parallel to Buckingham car rentals liberia costa rica Palace Road and Elizabeth Street flank the tower. The building is finished in white, with the window frames car rentals liberia costa rica in contrasting black. Although at first glance symmetrical, there are detail differences between the two wings, in particular a concrete canopy on the southern wing, which projects over a secondary entrance/exit.
Victoria Coach Station, December 2013. By Daniel Wright car rentals liberia costa rica [ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] at this flickr page Up close, car rentals liberia costa rica the detailing is wonderful. A four-square pattern breaks up the horizontals on the wings, while the metal windows car rentals liberia costa rica at ground level feature chevron patterning at their sides.
Window and wing detail, Victoria Coach Station, December car rentals liberia costa rica 2013. By Daniel Wright [ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] at this flickr page Then there s the way that the curved inner ends of the wings tuck into the central tower, itself constructed of elements which step both backwards and inwards, with corner windows emphasising the shape.
Tower and wing detail, Victoria Coach Station, December 2013. By Daniel Wright [ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] on this flickr page Opened in 1932, the coach station was designed by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners. The same company was responsible for a series of extraordinary Art Deco factory buildings in West London, most of them on the A4 Great West Road. The Hoover Factory (on the A40 Western Avenue) is perhaps the most famous today, car rentals liberia costa rica but the Great West Road s collection of Wallis, Gilbert buildings including the Firestone Tyre Factory, the Pyrene Building, the Coty Cosmetics Factory, and Simmonds Aerocessories, is perhaps one of the most significant examples of the fact that functional buildings can and should look beautiful too. Most of the buildings just mentioned survive to this day. Take a trip on the Great West Road s so-called Golden Mile , and amidst the dirt and noise and soulless later buildings, I promise you ll fall in love with Wallis, Gilbert and Partners work as well as that of other architects car rentals liberia costa rica who added to the industrial car rentals liberia costa rica Art Deco extravaganza along the road. The exception is the Firestone Tyre Factory. car rentals liberia costa rica It was scandalously demolished in 1980, over a bank holiday weekend, on the eve of being placed on the National Heritage List for England (in a move many commentators believed was not a coincidence (as here )). Its disgraceful replacement stands behind the original Firestone Tyre Factory gates and piers, the only part of the building to survive ( these were listed in 2001 ).
Wallis, Gilbert and Partners also designed smaller but still wonderful Art Deco coach/bus stations in locations including Hemel Hempstead (now demolished), car rentals liberia costa rica Peckham (now demolished), Amersham (now demolished), St Albans (now demolished), and Windsor (erm, now demolished; there s a pattern here, I think). But Victoria Coach Station, with its much grander scale, is the company s transport masterpiece, not to mention one of its few (possibly only) survivors in this field.
Initially operated by a consortium of coach operators serving London, by 1968 Victoria Coach Station passed into the hands of the new National Bus Company, before eventually finding its way into the ownership of London Transport in 1988. London Transport s successor, Transport for London (TfL), still retains responsibility for it, and the coach station has its own orange version of the TfL roundel. The orange roundel can also be seen on other roadside coach stops near the coach station and in scattered locations around the rest of London.
The rarely-seen orange version of the TfL roundel is used for coach stops and Victoria Coach Station. By Daniel Wright [ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] on this flickr page I d like to say that Victoria Coach Station makes a landmark gateway for travellers coming to London by coach, but of course they arrive at the other bit of the coach station across the road. For those leaving London, after admiring the outside they would then unfortunately have been subject to its interior; and the inside is a complete let-down, in stark contrast to the delectable outside. Instead of having a glorious Art Deco experience as their final memory of London, they instead have to suffer the coach station s plastic-y, soulless waiting areas and decor. Whatever Art Deco styling might once have graced the waiting areas has long since vanished, replaced by something which currently has an early 1990s feel about it. You could be in any modern coach station which has undergone an entirely indifferent refurbishment within the last 15-20 years.
The waiting area at Victoria Coach Station. By diamond car rentals liberia costa rica geezer [ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] via this flickr page It s like tearing into a beautifully wrapped birthday present and discovering that there s only a bag of your least favourite vegetables inside. Turnips, in my case.
There s a general assumption that the coach station is listed by statutory heritage body English Heritage, affording its protection into the future. However, this is a misconception. car rentals liberia costa rica Despite even knowledgeable bodies like the Transport Trust (a charity promoting the greater public recognition of transport history car rentals liberia costa rica in the UK) suggesting that it is Grade II listed , a quick check of the official National Heritage List for England proves that it is not. Indeed, car rentals liberia costa rica the landowner of the plot on which the coach station is built has indicated that it wants to redevelop the land on which the coach station stands , relocating it somewhere else. Whether that means the existing building would be demolished or converted is anyone s guess at the moment. But given that the coach station is not listed, another Firestone Factory situation remains a risk. Given that most of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners transport output has already been demolished, that would be scandalous.
I said last week that this time I would look at two public transport buildings, but I see that I ve already used up most of this week s word count on Victoria Coach Station car rentals liberia costa rica alone. So I ll put off building number two until next week (tune in again then if you re a Streamline Moderne fan) and leave you with this thought.
The extraordinary thing (as far as this blog is concerned, anyway) about Buckingham Palace Road is that opposite Victoria car rentals liberia costa rica Coach Station is a second Streamline Moderne transport building. This one, however, has a transport history of which most people who pass its doors are completely unaware