The Development of the Railway Passenger Stations of Europe

The 1804s brought to the urban scene a new building type: the railway passenger station. Major examples, with their waiting halls and train sheds, provided a novel indoor space in which the curious could stand back and observe the theatre of life.

Britain led the way in establishing this building type but France was not far behind, and the most important examples conceived in the late 1840s are Newcastle Central and Paris Est, the latter providing a template, in turn, for several of the early Italian termini.

The lecture explored the development of these buildings either side of the Channel, finishing with the rebirth of the train shed, in recent decades, as urban icon and shopping mall.