Booking Office, St. Pancras Station, London. Designer: George Gilbert Scott. 1868-77. Photograph and text by George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
The booking office, which is entered through the doorway shown previously, reveals an unresolved conflict between functional and aesthetic concerns, with the latter losing out. The large scale of the station and hotel complex, required in part to match the scale of the train shed, produced a grand, if rather gloomy, high-ceilinged room dominated by the gothic windows that characterize the exterior façade.
The wooden structure containng the ticketing booths, which has a glass extension to make it larger, appears a foreign addition, an afterthought dwarfed by the room. The effect is worsened by the fact that the entire space, which once probably served as a waiting room, which would have bustled with travellers, is now virtually empty. [GPL]
References
Crook, J. Mordaunt. The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post-Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Meeks, Carol L. V. The Victorian Railroad Station: An Architectural History. New Haven: Yale UP, 1956.
Last modified 17 August 2016