Origins
A ‘Brobdingnagian Absurdity’ the waspish Victorian critic and architect Augustus Welby Pugin called it when new and it has been praised or neglected ever since. But except for the Forth Bridge the ‘Euston Arch’, the ceremonial portal to the world’s first great railway, is perhaps the best-known railway structure in Great Britain, long after its demolition. In this article we shall see that the old station lay under sentence of death for over half a century and that decisions made in the 1830s led directly to events in 1960. We shall also find that the demolition was a cultural watershed, still with resonance today. The classic perfection of the great structure, gleaming against the sky, flanked by decorative railings and attendant lodges, was the image in the minds of those who urged its preservation and of those who still lament its loss. The masterly water colours and engravings of J. C. Bourne captured the essence of old Euston, but as we shall see, that prospect was actually invisible for almost a century. The Doric ‘Arch’ was properly a ‘propylæum’, or gatehouse, but we shall use the more familiar term here.
The station was built by the London & Birmingham Railway (L&BR) and was opened on 20th July 1837, just a month after Queen Victoria’s accession (thus making it ‘Victorian’); at first trains only ran as far as Boxmoor, with the full route to Birmingham opening in September 1838. Beyond the Arch and to the right were separate departure and arrival platforms, a distinction which lasted until the station was demolished. The arrival platform was flanked by a covered cab and omnibus road, enabling passengers to proceed smoothly to their destinations. Beside the departure road was a two-storey office building containing booking offices, waiting rooms and conveniences, all segregated by class. The platforms were sheltered by new forms of roofs, latticed with iron ribs and glass, which soon became commonplace. There were carriage sheds north of the platforms and two railway-owned hotels faced the station, the first of their kind anywhere.
There was no model elsewhere to be copied – even the word ‘platform’ wasn’t used, the term ‘stage’ being adopted (from the ‘landing stages’ at seaports). Later the location of the station well away from Euston Road meant that it never enjoyed direct connection with the Metropolitan Railway and there was no Underground access until the opening of the Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead and City & South London tube railways in 1907, although until 1914 passengers had to leave the main line station to reach the respective stations in nearby streets.
After the L&BR merged in 1846 into the
