The grandly titled Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opened in 1906 with 14 stations – the same year that saw the expansion of the Bakerloo line.
York Road was a stop between King’s Cross and Caledonian Road – and like the other stations of the era was designed by Leslie Green.
Between 1903 and 1907 these now iconic buildings sprang up around London with their oxblood-red glazed terracotta tiles, large arched windows, and green-tiled ticket halls with geometric arts and crafts styling.
The platforms at York Road were reached directly from the lifts and boasted white with maroon and brick red patterns.
But York Road at the corner of what is now York Way and Bingfield Street was located in an industrial area and was never busy.
As early as 1909 some trains didn’t stop there – and Sunday services were withdrawn in 1918.
It closed entirely in 1924 during the General Strike and didn’t reopen for months until a question was raised in Parliament.
It reopened, but shut permanently in 1932 on the opening day of the Piccadilly line extension north from Finsbury Park to Arnos Grove.
A small signalling cabin on the platform was still used until the 1960s to operate a train crossover north of the station.
For years the disused above ground station was occupied by the Victor Printing Company before becoming derelict.
But the blood-red tiles had a clean-up in the 1980s with the old name of York Road embedded in the tiles once again visible.
With the major redevelopment of King’s Cross in the early noughties Transport for London and Islington Council commissioned a study looking into reopening the station.
According to a reply given by the then London mayor in 2012, the £21 million needed to bring it back to modern standards was considered too costly.
The mayoral response read: “A study in 2005 concluded that while there were potential benefits to re-opening York Road station these were not sufficient to justify the very substantial costs involved. Creating an additional stop would also extend journey times for existing users of the Piccadilly line.
“The area is already well served by buses and by the much improved King’s Cross St. Pancras Tube station.”
Today the disused station is used as an emergency exit from the tunnels which means one of the passageways between the platforms is permanently lit by lamps.
If you peer out of a passing train you can still spot the old signal cabin – and the London Transport Museum has previously run a virtual Zoom tour of the ghostly tunnels and abandoned platforms.
