Archive
39 Furnival Street – The Gateway to a Secret Underground World…
A few weeks ago now, me & And went to visit some of the many buildings that formed part of the Open House weekend here in London. We had an excellent afternoon exploring buildings usually closed to us commoners, and we saw some amazing things, any number of which could easily form the basis of a future post…
But the one thing that has really stuck with me was a building that we didn’t even go into, only walking past it on the way to somewhere else.
Since taking these photos, I’ve found out that the intriguing facade on the left belongs to No. 39 Furnival Street (which is just off High Holborn near Chancery Lane Tube) and is a far more interesting thing than I ever could have imagined…
Hidden behind the heavy duty hoist, the oversized ventilation grill and the formidable steel doors is a goods lift, that dates back to the late 1940′s and which leads down to an endless warren of tunnels known initially as The Chancery Lane Deep Shelter, and latterly as the Kingsway Trunk Exchange, a secret underground installation that began life at the end of WWII…
To hugely summarise the contents of the numerous websites on the subject (of which Subterranea Britannica is the most scarily in depth and where much of this post has been gleaned from) it was after the Blitz of London in 1940 that the idea of deep shelters began to develop. A number of locations were chosen across London, one of which was below the Central Line tunnels that ran along Chancery Lane. Two parallel tunnels approximately 380m long were constructed over the next 5 years, with the primary access being off Furnival Street.
After the war, the tunnels were briefly occupied by nearly 400 tons of Public Records Office documents, until in the late 1940′s, after the Government’s realisation of how vulnerable the Capital’s communications networks were in time of conflict, it was decided to transform the tunnels into a protected trunk telephone exchange.
This huge undertaking was completed in 1954 and the resultant “underground town” became home to (at its peak) over 200 workers a day, who could variously enjoy the delights of the canteen, the recreation areas and the sick bay, confident in the knowledge that if the world was to end, they would still be able to connect phone calls from America…
Under the auspices of The Post Office, the Kingsway Exchange continued to operate secretly until the early 1980′s, when as the equipment became increasingly redundant and the telephone industry developed its digital and mobile formats, the decision was finally taken to abandon the installation to obscurity.
And there it has remained. Other than a few visits from interested Societies and enthusiasts, it looks like it has been more or less empty ever since, although my impression is that much of the equipment is still there and the space itself is just waiting for a new use…
The original shaft the sits behind the facade of 39 Furnival Street..
One of the main tunnels of the Kingsway Exchange sometime in the 1960s.
Elephants in Greenwich and deceptive columns….
I forgot to put these photos up…
And and I went for a bike ride a couple of weekends ago and as we took a short cut through the grounds of Greenwich University we came across this magnificent animal… A 4m+ high elephant with a castle on his back.. all made entirely out of plastic and then painted to look old and broken…
It seems that a film version of Les Miserables is currently being made there and Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawskmoor’s fine buildings are once again considered to be the ideal backdrop to create that period feel… (in this case an early 19th Century France)
I say once again, as there always seems to be someone making a film there.. Last year it was Johnny Depp and the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, when huge areas were hidden behind massive green screens which we could clearly see from the other side of the river. If you look you can also see the buildings playing a starring role in The Kings Speech, The Golden Compass, BBC’s Great Expectations, the recent Sherlock Holmes films with Robert Downey Jr, and The Iron Lady in which Meryl Streep takes on the role of the evil, depraved villain….
Speaking of the University of Greenwich campus buildings and specifically The Old Royal Naval College, I was told a likely story years ago by my architectural history teacher at Leeds, that I only recently discovered was absolutely true…
After Sir Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor had presented their proposals for the great hall sometime during 1698, the client was concerned that the lintel above the wide span of the full height opening into the hall, would not be sufficient to hold up the massive dome above. Despite the architects arguments that there was more than enough structure, the client insisted that additional columns be placed in the opening. Very reluctantly, as he felt they diminished the effect of the huge opening into the main space, and after a number of heated exchanges, Wren agreed to the extra columns.
The last laugh was Wrens however, as unbeknownst to the client, he instructed the contractor to make the columns too short, and there is to this day, a two inch gap between the top of the capital and the underside of the lintel…
They’re the two round columns in the photos below and support (or not) the dome to the left in the photo above. Who said architects were arrogant…
Manhatta.. A Day in the Life of a City (1921)
An interesting little silent film today…
Filmed in 1921 by the artist Charles Sheeler and the photographer Paul Strand, it depicts (with the aid of some rather poetic interludes by Walt Whitman) a typical day in Manhattan. There’s also a musical soundtrack of sorts, but it’s hard work to say the least, and I would recommend watching it with the sound turned down…
There’s some really memorable images in the film: I particularly like the huge mass of people arriving by ferry at about 1 min 40, and then moving past the camera with that distinctive silent film shuffle. Makes me wonder if Fritz Lang saw this before he made Metropolis… there’s also the guy smashing up rocks with a large sledge hammer at 3mins 27, a seemingly pointless action by the look of the effect he’s having… The old school mechanical digger straight after is also pretty cool…
Other than the obvious changes in technology and fashion (and the blatant disregard for health and safety demonstrated at about 3 mins 45) I would guess that a typical day in Manhattan today, more than 90 years on, is probably not that different… maybe less smokey and steam driven, but certainly as noisy and busy…
Oscar Wilde’s tomb by Jacob Epstein
It was good to see recently that the wonderful “Modernist Angel” sculpture by Jacob Epstein for Oscar Wilde’s tomb has been cleaned and restored to its former glory…
The monument was originally commissioned in 1909 by Wilde’s lover and possibly closest friend Robbie Ross, for Wilde’s second resting place at Père Lachaise Cemetery in the city of Paris, his first being the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris where Wilde “rested” for only 9 years. The commission was a very important one for the 29 year old American sculptor, who had been in London for only a few years and was still suffering the backlash from his work on Charles Holden’s British Medical Association the year before.
Once again however, Epstein fell foul of the Authorities as the work was condemned as being indecent due to its prominent male genitalia, apparently resulting in it being hidden from public view by a tarpaulin. The “offending” item has long since been vandalised and I was rather surprised that this current restoration didn’t look to reinstate the poor thing’s manhood…
The reason for the restoration was the vogue (only a decade or so old, from what I can gather) for leaving lipstick kisses around the monument’s base, the grease from which was beginning to cause significant damage to the limestone.
So the base of the work has now been cleaned and restored and is wrapped up in a glass and steel screen, which looks tasteful enough from the photos, and I am sure is the right thing to do to protect this wonderful piece for future generations etc etc.. Although I can’t help but feel that Oscar himself would almost certainly have preferred the attention and the adoration of the lipstick kisses….
I’ll finish with the rather fine words of Wilde’s Epitaph: chosen by Robbie Ross, carved by Jacob Epstein and taken from The Ballard of Reading Gaol…
“And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn”
Timeless Animal sculptures
We went to the British Museum to see the Grayson Perry exhibiton yesterday afternoon, but were surprised and disappointed to find that there were no more tickets available for the day…
Which resulted in a rather aimless hour or so wandering around some of the other rooms… although it did mean that I came across these rather wonderful sculptural palettes…
These little carved mudstone animals are such beautiful objects in themselves, they have a freshness and simplicity that gives them an almost contemporary feel.
But then I read that they were made by the Naqada people, in a Pre-dynastic (i.e. before the Pharaoh’s) Egypt and dated from about 4000 BC… making them over 6000 years old… Truly an amazing thing, especially when you think that here in Britain during this period (the Neolithic) we were just about getting the hang of knapping flint to make axe heads, forming very basic clay pots and simple representations of the human figure such as The Westray Wifey.
Not a great deal is known about The Naqada, a culture spanning a period of roughly 1500 years (from 4400 to 3000BC) and named after the city where the majority of archeological finds have been unearthed. But they obvioulsy had a keen sense of style and an eye for beauty that it would be easy to think of as the seed for the wonders of Ancient Egpyt that were to follow over the next few thousand years.
William Gottlieb’s 1940′s New York Jazz photos..
I’ll start with an admission… I’m not a fan of the large majority of Jazz.
In fact there are certain things that I really can’t stand about it…. it’s noodliness, the insistence of playing on the off beat, the way every member of the band has to have a solo, the disjointed and fractured song structures, the almost wilful disregard for any recognisable rhythm…. I could go on (and often do, ask anyone who knows me)
But there are some aspects that I can most definitely appreciate about jazz; the passion (bordering on obsession in many cases) the wonderful style and panache of the musicians (especially from this period, the 1930′s and 40′s) and the sense that the artists were doing it because they just had to.. it was in their blood.
So when I came across this set of photos on Flickr recently, I was captivated by them. Taken by the American, William Gottlieb, the images document the jazz scene in New York City from 1938 to 1948, a time recognized by many as the “Golden Age of Jazz”.
Gottlieb was both a music journalist and a self-taught photographer who spent his life capturing the jazz greats, almost always in black and white. Upon his death in 2006, Gottlieb bequeathed his entire collection (over 1600 images) to the public domain, which is where I found them on a Flickr site here… There are many famous names in the collection: Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington to name a few.
The images I’ve chosen for this post are just some of the ones that appealed to me. I particularly like the fact that almost every single person in the photos is smiling…. New York must have been an amazing place during this time…
Bobby Fischer
There’s much in the papers at the moment about the American Chess Grand Master Booby Fischer. This publicity has been generated by a new film called Bobby Fischer Against the World that sounds like it’s well worth seeing.
In the pieces I’ve read, Fischer comes across as a paranoid, complicated and ultimately selfish character, with the adjectives genius and loony seemingly used in equal measure (as is so often the case).
Rather than just write up his life story, I thought I would list my favourite top 10 “Fischer Facts” (in roughly chronological order) and then you can make up you own mind as to his sanity and his place in history….
1. Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago in March 1943. His father left when he was two and, as his communist leaning mother struggled to bring him up, he immersed himself in chess, memorizing huge numbers of famous games and finishes.
2. He became a Grand Master at the age 15, the youngest ever up till that time (1958)
3. As his reputation grew, so did his ego. Even if the organisers could get him to show up at a tournament due to his ever growing list of demands, once he was there, constant complaints about the audience, the lighting, the cameras etc, caused many to question his sportsmanship and accuse him of trying to psyche his opponents out. Fischer always denied this stating that he didn’t need to resort to mind games as he could beat them all anyway.
4.In what was generally seen by the US as a Cold War Victory, Fischer beat the Russian Grand Master Boris Spassky in 1972. The tournament was held in Iceland, one of the few countries that was acceptable to both the Americans and the Russians.
5. After issuing the World Chess Federation with a list of 179 demands which had to all be met before he would compete, he famously didn’t defend his 1972 World Champion title when all but one were agreed. The single sticking point was Fischer’s demand that should the contest be a draw, he be allowed to keep his title and split the prize money.
6. In the early 1980′s he was mistakenly arrested for being a bank robber, and later published a document accusing the Police of torture.
7. He supposedly had all the metal fillings from his teeth removed in the 1980′s so that the CIA couldn’t control his mind.
8. In 1992 after 30 years as a recluse, he finally agreed to replay Boris Spassky (apparently for a £3m+ fee). The location chosen however was Yugoslavia, at that time under UN sanctions due to the Bosnian War, and the US Govt. issued Fischer with a warning that if he played, he would not be allowed back into the US. He won the match but lost the right to return home, and lived the rest of his life on the move, finally ending up in Iceland
where he died in January 2008.
9. As if his naturally abrasive personality wasn’t enough, his views got more extreme with age, and he is on record both as a holocaust denier and as a celebrant of the 9/11 attacks on America, claiming he wanted to see the US “wiped out”.
10. Even after his death the intrigue continued, when in July 2010, Fischer’s remains were exhumed in order to settle a paternity claim. Fischer left an estimated fortune of about $2m which the Phillipino American Marilyn Young, claimed her daughter, Jinky was entitled to. DNA tests however proved that she wasn’t, but it was only in March this year that his millions were awarded to a Japanese woman, Miyoko Watai who was legally declared his widow by an Icelandic Court. Relatives of Fischer are (unsurprisingly) disputing this and appealing the decision, dragging the man’s influence on even longer, something he’d probably appreciate.
Typography at the Festival of Britain
This year is the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain which took place between May and September of 1951.
The Festival was conceived as a series of countrywide events commemorating the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and celebrating the history, achievements and potential of the British people. The timing of the event was also significant and it was promoted as “A Tonic to the Nation”, an opportunity to mark the end of post war austerity and encourage a new and more open approach to the arts, science and technology.
I’ve previously written about the Festival logo here and I’ve had an interest in the Festival ever I got a copy of the Festival catalogue for about 10p from a jumble sale and my mum told me she and her family travelled all the way down from Yorkshire to see the South Bank Exhibition. I’m sure she said it was the first and only time she came to London in the first 30 years or so of her life.
Anyway, as part of this years anniversary happenings, a number of excellent exhibitions have been organised. One (sadly now finished) was down at the wonderful Pallant House Gallery in Chichester (where there are also some beautiful textiles and furniture by Robin and Lucien Day on show). The other main display is at the Royal Festival Hall, the only permanent structure of the South Bank Exhibition. We have been to see both exhibitions over the last few weeks and one aspect that struck a chord with me was that of the lettering…
One of the key early decisions made by the organising panel, was that the overall style and feel of the Festival should reflect a more traditional, almost halcyon Englishness that they felt had been lost during the chaos of the previous 20 years or so, an Englishness that was seen as crucial to the future success of the nation.
In lettering terms, this meant a deliberate move away from the ubiquitous predominantly European designed sans serif fonts of the war years (think of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” stuff that seems to be everywhere at the moment) and a greater consideration of the English vernacular, especially 18th Century “Fat Face” fonts such as those used on this handbill from 1833. A fat face or Egyptian font, is one where the serif element is overly large and in some cases is similar in thickness to the main stem of the letter (see the E on the pink image below). These were designed specifically for maximum legibility and consequently were much used in posters and headlines.
The result of this approach was that against the background of Mid Twentieth Century design, the various Festival publications and documents have an almost period feel, and are immediately recognisable as being from the 1950′s, with a coherence that belies the many different styles and fonts used by the exhibitions designers.
In addition to this, a new typeface was especially commissioned for the event. Designed by Philip Boydell, it was actually a sans serif font, but used tall, thin letters and was only available in capitals. It had a vague resemblance to bunting and benefited from an almost three-dimensional, leaning effect which created a subtle sense of movement when it was used.
All in all the Festival lettering was considered very successful and was an intrinsic aspect of the festivals popularity.
Some examples of these designs are shown below.
If you’re interested in this kind of stuff like me, an article about signage on the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall by Robin Kinross for Hyphen Press, can be found here
Spomenik
There is a new book out by Jan Kempenaers in which he documents a 3 year journey around former Yugoslavia, photographing some of the most amazing sculptures and monuments I have ever seen…
As I understand it, the former president of Yugoslavia, President Tito felt the need to honour the victims of the post war political purges that befell many of the newly Communist countries. As a result of this need for reconciliation and recognition he commissioned the cream of Yugoslavian architects and sculptors to build a series of Spomenik (which I believe means “monument”) across Yugoslavia.
These huge monuments are generally made of concrete or stone, and a few have metal adornments designed in. They were generally located on or near the sites of conflict, concentration camps and other atrocities and as such are now to be found throughout Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia.
In Jan Kempenaers book there are almost 30 of these strange and wonderful structures. Today the names of the designers and the structures themselves are largely forgotten with most of them appearing to be falling quietly into disrepair, staining slowly and degrading into the landscape.
Even so, they still posses a power and a beauty that to me, seems entirely befitting of their original intention.
The Armoury Show.
I came across this site recently. You can click on the tree at the top if you want to go back to the explanatory home page, but in essence it is a virtual recreation of one of the Twentieth Century’s most influential art exhibitions, certainly in America and arguably the world…
If you had been in New York City nearly 100 years ago in 1913, then between February 17th and March 13th you would have had the opportunity to visit what has come to be known as The Armoury Show.
Spread out across 18 galleries in the US Army’s 69th Infantry Armoury building at 25th and Lexington were over 1250 works of art by over 300 artists, the names of which read like a who’s who of Modern Art: Picasso, Matisse, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Cezanne, Duchamp, Gauguin, Epstein, Van Gogh, Monet, Munch…. virtually every key Contemporary European painter and sculptor from the early Twentieth Century was there…
The exhibition was organised by the newly formed Association of American Painters and Sculptors, and its intention was to showcase some of the big names of American Art against the rising stars of Europe, men and women who were at the forefront of what would come to be known as Modernism. With a roughly equal share of gallery space, the rather academic and stayed realist and impressionistic works of the Americans however looked dated and out of step with the more cutting edge European trends, and although not to everyone’s taste (President Roosevelt famously said of the contents “that’s not art”) the impact of the show on the US cannot be underestimated, influencing as it did many of the following generation(s) of American Modern painters.
What I find amazing is that although the exhibition was held only 7 years after Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (often cited as the first truly modernist painting) the variety, diversity and quality of work on show was staggering: from the early Cubist work of Braque, to the stylised Futurist dynamics of Picabia and from the sensual sculptures of Brancussi through to the wholly abstract colours of Kandinsky. An unbelievable collection of work, with many of the next decades key ideas and styles already in evidence.
If I only had a time machine etc. etc. etc…
By the way, this post shouldn’t be confused with the other Armoury Show, Richard Jobson’s follow on band from The Skids. I saw The Armoury Show play in Leeds (at The Warehouse I think) in the mid Eighties, and although I went because I was a Skids fan, it was the mighty John McGeoch who I was most keen to see. Sadly he died a few years ago, but he was one of the most influential (if criminally underrated) guitarists ever. As well as being the backbone of The Armoury Show, his instantly recognisable big guitar sound can be heard gracing the likes of Magazine, Public Image Limited and of course Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Check out Ju Ju if you don’t believe me…. Spellbound (obviously), but Monitor still sounds good.
