King's Cross

King's Cross is a train station in North London, England. It was designed by the architect Lewis Cubitt and built between 1851-1852. It has a 120 foot tall clock tower and large (70 foot tall) arched windows.

On British railroad timetables, King's Cross is abbreviated as "KX".

King's Cross is one of the railroad stations in the English version of Monopoly.

Kings Cross has not been the centre of the gay community in Sydney since the 1970s.

Darlinghurst is the centre of the gay community, although Leichhardt is big with lesbians.

It's also not quite right to say that Kings Cross was a working class suburb. It was originally a wealthy suburb, but from the early 20th century began attracting bohemians, artists, writers, migrants and anybody else who didn't like suburbia.

31 people died and over 60 were injured in a fire in the King's Cross Underground station. The fire started when a still-burning cigarette butt fell into a crevice in an escalator from the Piccadilly Line platform. While that escalator burned, flammable gases were produced over the course of the next 15 minutes. These gases were then ignited in a flash fire that spread through multiple escalators and the station concourse.

The disaster was exacerbated by the fact that trains continued arriving virtually every minute, adding to the transient load and making reliable evacuation extremely difficult. Use of wood as a construction material also contributed (as wood is obviously flammable). Among the most significant results were a smoking ban in the entire Tube system, and a change to non-flammable flooring materials in Tube cars (carriages).

Sources:
http://www.floormaster-plus.com/kingscross.htm
http://www.sos.se/SOS/PUBL/REFERENG/9003030E.htm

Kings Cross is an area of North London just above the City. The area was originally a small village known as Battle Bridge: there was an ancient bridge here across the River Fleet, where supposedly Queen Boadicea of the Iceni fought the Roman legions. According to legend, she is buried beneath the platforms of Kings Cross railway station, which river, bridge and all were demolished to make way for. The station was designed by Lewis Cubitt and built in 1851-2: the train shed is typical beautiful nineteenth-century engineering, the front is of plain yellow brick with a square Italianate clock tower. The area was named for a 60ft column with a statue of King George IV on top, erected in 1836 opposite where the station is now at what became known as the Kings Cross. The name stuck, despite the fact that the monument was unpopular and got pulled down six years later.

Like many areas of London the housing in the area was once elegant, but as wealthy people moved out of the city it declined into crumbling slums. Kings Cross is still fairly shabby and until recently was a notorious red-light area. It shares a tube station with St Pancras station, a few hundred yards away.