Baker Street tube station is a station on the London
Underground at the junction of Baker Street and the Marylebone Road. The
station lies in Travelcard Zone 1 and is served by five different lines. It is
one of the original stations of the Metropolitan Railway (MR), the world's
first underground railway, opened in 1863.
On the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines it is between
Great Portland Street and Edgware Road. On the Metropolitan line it is between
Great Portland Street and Finchley Road. On the Bakerloo line it is between
Regent's Park and Marylebone, and on the Jubilee line it is between Bond Street
and St. John's Wood.
The station has entrances on Baker Street, Chiltern Street
(ticket holders only) and Marylebone Road. Nearby attractions include Regent's
Park, Lord's Cricket Ground, the Sherlock Holmes Museum and Madame Tussauds.
Baker Street station was opened by the MR on 10 January 1863
(these platforms are now served by the Circle and Hammersmith & City
lines). On 13 April 1868, the MR opened the first section of Metropolitan and
St John's Wood Railway as a branch from its existing route. This line, serving
the open-air platforms, was steadily extended to Willesden Green and
northwards, finally reaching Aylesbury Town and Verney Junction (some 50
miles/80 km from Baker Street) in 1892. The MR station mainly competed for
traffic with Euston, where the LNWR provided local services to Middlesex and
Watford, and later with Marylebone, where the GCR provided expresses to
Aylesbury and beyond on the same line.
Over the next few decades this section of the station was
extensively rebuilt to provide four platforms. The current Metropolitan line
layout largely dates from 1925, and the bulk of the surface buildings, designed
by architect Charles Walter Clark, also date from this period.
The Baker Street & Waterloo Railway (BS&WR, now the
Bakerloo line) opened on 10 March 1906; Baker Street was the temporary northern
terminus of the line until it was extended to Marylebone station on 27 March
1907.The original station building stood on Baker Street and served the tube
platforms with lifts, but these were supplemented with escalators in 1914,
linking the Metropolitan line and the Bakerloo line platforms by a new
concourse excavated under the Metropolitan line.[6]
On 20 November 1939, following the construction of an
additional southbound platform and connecting tube tunnels between Baker Street
and Finchley Road stations, the Bakerloo line took over the Metropolitan line's
stopping services between Finchley Road and Wembley Park and its Stanmore
branch. The current Bakerloo ticket hall and escalators to the lower concourse
were provided in conjunction with the new service.[7] The Jubilee line added an
extra northbound platform and replaced the Bakerloo line service to Stanmore from
its opening on 1 May 1979.
On 23 August 1973, a bomb was found in a carrier bag in the
ticket hall.[8] The bomb was defused by the bomb squad. A week later, on 30
August, a member of staff found another bomb left on the overbridge. Again, it
was defused without any injury.
Of the MR's original stations, the sub-surface Circle and
Hammersmith and City line platforms are the best preserved. Plaques along the
platform show old plans and photographs of the station.
The station layout is rather complex. The sub-surface
station is connected to the open-air Metropolitan line station. This is a
terminus for some Metropolitan line trains, but there is also a connecting
curve that joins to the Circle line just beyond the platforms that allows
Metropolitan line trains to run to Aldgate in the City of London.
Below this is a deep-level tube station for the Bakerloo and
Jubilee lines. These are arranged in a cross-platform interchange, and there
are connections between the two lines just to the north of the station. With
ten platforms overall, Baker Street has the most London Underground platforms
of any station on the network.
Outside the Marylebone Road exits, a large statue of
Sherlock Holmes commemorates the fictional detective's association with 221B
Baker Street. A restoration in the 1980s on the oldest portion of the Baker
Street station brought it back to something similar to its 1863 appearance.
The station is operated by the Metropolitan Line management
team. Offices of the line are within the vicinity of the station.
