Euston Road is the broadest, busiest, most polluted street on the Monopoly board, so hardly somewhere you'd want to build a house. It's part of London's first bypass, the New Road, which opened in 1746 as a means of driving cattle to Smithfield without having to faff around in the city. The middle-third of the New Road was named Euston Road in 1857, sandwiched inbetween Marylebone Road (not on the board) and Pentonville Road (coming up next). The name Euston comes originally from the Suffolk village which was home to the Duke of Grafton, the local landowner hereabouts. In its time the road's been dug up by the Metropolitan Railway, widened by the GLC and marginally excluded from the Congestion Zone by Ken Livingstone. I shall be walking it from west to east, in the same direction as many a cow's final journey.
The transition from Marylebone Road to Euston Road occurs at the top of Great Portland Street, just past the tube station, the first building being a Tesco Express. The second is a pub, The Greene Man, although when the road was built the tavern on this site was called the Farthing Pye House and there was nothing else in the area bar farmland. The road here is six lanes wide and invariably busy with cars, buses, coaches and particularly taxis, each now held to a 20mph speed limit. The two sides of the road are also very different, one new, shiny and thrusting, the other older, shabby and shop-fronted. For hotdesking, commerce and Pret stick to the north (in Regents Place) and for shoe repairs, travel agents and piles of discarded cardboard stick to the south.
The Euston Road underpass was added in 1964 in a deal with a developer who wanted to build office blocks alongside. most notably the Euston Tower. It cuts such a gash that you need to choose up front which side to be because there's no chance of a crossing or subway. A thin strip of public realm has been inexplicably squeezed between the sliproad and the lip of the underpass, including wildly optimistic benches, and although I've never seen anyone risk using them the associated detritus suggests they often have overnight residents. At the far end is Paulies, a streetfood vendor, where everything's red including the gazebo, the paella and the owner's trilby. Here we hit the top of Tottenham Court Road plus Warren Street station, and pedestrians briefly get a chance to dominate.
Next University College Hospital takes over, on one side a wall of glass (in which the BT Tower is reflected) and on the other a patient-focused latticed stack opened in 2005 and decorated in various shades of muted teal. I've only spent the one evening waiting here in A&E. The timber-topped air shaft outside, with its unlabelled access door, looks like it might feed the underpass but is actually directly above the Metropolitan line. The benches along this green strip are slightly likelier to be used than those passed earlier. Euston Square station swiftly follows, with cars queueing to exit the underpass immediately above the ticket hall. Take the north subway for King of Falafel and the south subway for all things medical courtesy of the Wellcome Trust and the Wellcome Collection.
I paused here to enjoy the Wellcome Collection's current exhibition, The Cult of Beauty, which as ever addresses an aspect of health and biology in a socially relevant way. In this case it's that beauty is only what you make of it, that aesthetic tastes change as attitudes evolve and that sometimes you should be proud of what you've already got. If you come away unchallenged you've not been paying close enough attention.
House: Friends House(173 Euston Road)
It's not really a house, it's the British headquarters of the Quaker movement, which was built here on a greenfield site in the 1920s. The architect went for a neo-Georgian design faced with Portland stone, and faced the challenge that one room had to be large enough to accommodate 1500 people for the Quakers' yearly meeting (called the Yearly Meeting). These days the building shouts loudest about what a great events venue it would make, being comprehensively equipped and centrally located, with religious recruitment a few decibels behind. Anyone can enjoy the garden or perhaps step inside the cafe for an ethical coffee and a browse. I don't know of any other bookshops with a dedicated section for "Peace, justice and sustainability", not to mention free Quakery literature and (currently) cut-price calendars.
Euston station fails to dominate Euston Road, being located too far back behind what used to be gardens. If you're used to the taxi rank being front left then prepare for a major shift because a new one is virtually ready front right - somewhat woodier in style - and cabbies will be switching over there imminently. The Euston Tap continues to dispense fresh beer from the tiny West and East Lodges, one emblazoned with destinations from Aberdeen to Huddersfield and the other from Inverness to Wolverhampton. Perhaps no other road in London is so well blessed with stations - five on the tube and three major railway stations, mostly thanks to the mid 19th-century machinations of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Railway Termini.
The number of big-hitter buildings now starts ramping up. St Pancras New Church was built 200 years ago in Greek Revival style and currently has a climate change banner flapping from the foot of the spire. Across the road is London's oldest operational fire station, then comes the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital (formerly the New Hospital for Women) and alongside is Unison HQ. Ignore the hideous Premier Inn with its Bibby Stockholm-like architecture, Euston Road being so profitable for the company that they have another hotel literally two buildings further down. Instead look to the modernist bulk of the British Library, a much more successful modern building (unless you take its recent assault by cybercriminals into account, or believe the over-cautious notices about how treacherously slippery the piazza out front is).
I paused here to enjoy the free exhibitions in the British Library, there being no paid-for extravaganza at present. The Treasures Gallery is an oft-forgotten brilliant treat, the opportunity to see famous texts across the millennia from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the original script for Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch, plus an actual copy of the Magna Carta in the room at the back in case you're ever in need of a fundamental dose of liberty.
Hotel: Midland Grand Hotel(Euston Road)
Marriott would prefer you to call it the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel, but to Sir John Betjeman and the Spice Girls it'll always be the Midland Grand, the iconic Gothic swoosh that fronts St Pancras station. Originally it had 150 rooms but it now has almost a hundred more, plus a chain of luxury apartments along the front including one in the clocktower. You get some idea of the money needed to live here by checking out the cars parked out front in the Residents Only spaces, including on my visit a scaldingly pink McLaren 540. The restaurant's less exclusive but still pricey, for example the champagne risotto costs £27 a bowl while a side of chips'll set you back seven quid, admittedly with a dash of aioli.
Outshone across the road is Camden Town Hall, recently refurbished with sustainability and events-hosting in mind. A few much-lesser hotels follow, then a hole in the ground that'll soon be an ostentatious laboratory building for the life sciences sector, as plans to rebrand this area The Knowledge Quarter continue unabated. The final parade of shops is plainly targeted at travellers passing through, offering a bureau de change, a betting shop and a quick pre-train Italian. I don't need to tell you about King's Cross station because that occupies a previous square on the Monopoly board, whereas just across the lights is where Pentonville Road starts and that's the next square, the last light blue, coming soon.
