On 20th September this year, Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station stations on the Northern Line of London Underground opened. Battersea Power Station is the end of the line on the branch, allowing people to get to this part of London easier. In the past decade, the old power station and the area around it has been converted into flats. Nine Elms is just up the road in an area that has been transformed from warehouses, older buildings, and vacant ground into a new hub of flats, workplaces, and the U.S. Embassy. In 2019, the company that I had accepted to work for were busy creating a new office here, and we were expecting to work here from June of 2020.
I visited the new office once toward the end of August for a meeting and then again toward the end of September, just before the line was open. At the beginning of the month, I visited the office again and had a chance to use the Northern Line extension at Nine Elms. Here are some glimpses of the escalator and the platform. The platforms are wide and open so that you have both directional trains running along the same platform with plenty of space. The design is similar to any new underground or overground station built in the past twenty years; it reminded me of Canada Water or Canary Wharf but without the protective doors along the rails.
The whole area of Nine Elms between Vauxhall and Battersea Power Station is still a construction site. To get to Embassy Gardens, there is a scaffolded walkway along New Covent Garden Market and underneath a mainline rail bridge.
The first building seen when crossing underneath the rail-line is towering buildings with a unique building at the end of the road. This is the new U.S. Embassy, which was moved from Grosvenor Square. It's not an attractive building. Surrounding it are fountains and water features, some cafes or restaurants, residential blocks, a small children's play area, and offices.
The new office is on one side of the embassy with reconstructed wetland and a miniature park. There is currently construction taking place on both sides of the building.
One of the new residential towers has gained a lot of press because it has a swimming pool with a glass ceiling suspended in mid-air between the two buildings.
The area around the embassy looks quite attractive, and I can see it being busy when more people go into the offices and when more of Nine Elms has been constructed.
Someone asked me what was here (at Nine Elms) before they built over it. I remember it being filled with older buildings, ware-house type buildings and shops, residential areas, and empty land. I did not need to visit here as there was nothing really to visit. Maybe one of my readers can answer that a bit better.
Leave a comment