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Frank C Pick, 1878 - 1941

Main details

Main details for this item.
Reference number
2001/26251
Name
Frank Pick
Born
23/11/1878
Died
Collection
Object type
  • Person
Completeness
100%
  • Biography

    AttributeValue
    Biography
    Frank Pick was born on 23 November 1878 in Spalding, Lincolnshire, to Francis and Fanny Pick (nee Clarke), but brought up mainly in York. Francis Pick was a draper from Stamford. Pick was educated at St Peter's School in York, after which he embarked on a career in law, working for a York solicitor named George Crombie from March 1897.

    In 1901 Pick married Mabel Woodhouse. They were not to have any natural children, but they did adopt a daughter.

    Pick took a first class honours degree in Law from the University of London in 1902, but in the Spring of that year he embarked on a change of career when he left George Crombie's law firm to join the Traffic Statistics Office of the North Eastern Railway Company. He became Personal Assistant to the General Manager, Sir George Gibb, in late 1904, and at the beginning of 1906 was invited by Gibb to move to London and join him in working for the Underground Group.

    When Albert Stanley (later Lord Ashfield) became the Underground Group's General Manager in 1907, Pick was put in charge of publicity. He quickly demonstrated a flair for the role and changed the way the Group publicised their stations. When a Traffic Development and Advertising Department was set up in 1909, Pick was put in charge of it.
    Date of birth
    Date of death
    Nationality
    British
    Employment
    Articled to George Crombie, Solicitor, York, March 1897 - Spring 1902
    Traffic Statistics Office, North Eastern Railway Company, Spring 1902 - 1906
    Personal Assistant, Underground Group, 1906 - 1907
    Head of publicity, Underground Group, 1907 - 1909
    Traffic Development Manager, Underground Group, 1909 - January 1912
    Commercial Manager, Underground Group, January 1912 - Early 1917
    In charge of Household Fuel and Lighting Branch of the Board of Trade, Early 1917 - probably June 1919
    Commercial Manager?, Underground Group, May 1919 - 31 January 1921
    Assistant Managing Director, Underground Group, 1 February 1921 - 1928
    Managing Director, Underground Group, 1928 - 30 June 1933
    Vice-Chairman, London Passenger Transport Board, 1 July 1933 - 1940
    Role
    Staff,

Full Biography

  • Full biography

    Frank Pick was born on 23 November 1878 in Spalding, Lincolnshire, to Francis and Fanny Pick (nee Clarke), but brought up mainly in York. Francis Pick was a draper from Stamford. Pick was educated at St Peter’s School in York, after which he embarked on a career in law, working for a York solicitor named George Crombie from March 1897.

    In 1901 Pick married Mabel Woodhouse. They were not to have any natural children, but they did adopt a daughter.

    Pick took a first class honours degree in Law from the University of London in 1902, but in the Spring of that year he embarked on a change of career when he left George Crombie’s law firm to join the Traffic Statistics Office of the North Eastern Railway Company. He became Personal Assistant to the General Manager, Sir George Gibb, in late 1904, and at the beginning of 1906 was invited by Gibb to move to London and join him in working for the Underground Group.

    When Albert Stanley (later Lord Ashfield) became the Underground Group’s General Manager in 1907, Pick was put in charge of publicity. He quickly demonstrated a flair for the role and changed the way the Group publicised their stations. When a Traffic Development and Advertising Department was set up in 1909, Pick was put in charge of it.

    Advertisements soon assumed a different appearance on the Group’s stations. Posters had previously been allowed to clutter stations up. Pick swept this clutter aside and designated certain areas for the Group’s own essential signage such as station names and route maps. Commercial advertising was still permitted, but only on platforms and in passageways. Pick also introduced new posters of often striking design which had simpler but effective messages and which aimed to encourage the off-peak travel which the Group’s finances so badly needed.

    Pick managed to persuade serious artists - until then reluctant to regard commercial work as befitting their talents - to design posters for the Group, and many respected names such as Frank Brangwyn and Edward McKnight Kauffer accepted commissions. The beginnings of the Group’s trademark bullseye sign can also be traced to this period when the existing red disc began to be transformed. This was as a result of Pick’s wish for the organisation to be associated with a visual symbol. Suggestions for Pick’s inspiration for this are the Youth Hostels Association’s triangle, the YMCA’s triangle, and the Paris Metro’s signs.

    In January 1912, Pick was made Commercial Manager, and overhauled the bus services of the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), who had been taken over by the Underground Group. To do this, Pick walked many miles at the weekend, observing areas which could be served by bus and discerning patterns of potential demand. He provided interchanges between bus and Underground and main line stations.

    The new services were advertised on posters and proved popular. Included in these were Sunday services as Pick recognised that the way that British people spent Sundays was changing. In addition, the Group had secured new powers to operate bus services out to a 15-mile radius from the General Post Office. Pick began providing bus services that would go right out to this limit.

    There were collaborative agreements which came into play with other bus operators which meant that consent would be sought should they or the LGOC wish to cross that invisible boundary.Around 1912, Pick gave some thought to a new typeface which would replace the various typefaces employed by the previously separate companies. He experimented using a ruler and compass and these helped him define what he wanted from the new typeface. In 1913, he commissioned the calligrapher Edward Johnston to design it.

    The typeface Johnston came up with in 1916 was officially known as Underground Railway Block, but was to become better known as Johnston Typeface. This now became the standard typeface employed by the Group, although Johnston continued to develop it until 1929. Even today, an updated version of Johnston’s typeface, called New Johnston, is still the one used by TfL, and its use is in fact limited exclusively to the organisation.

    It was Johnston also who was commissioned in 1916 to revise the Underground logo into the roundel we would recognise today.

    During World War One (WW1) Pick commissioned recruitment posters for display on the Underground which were more subtle and dignified than official government ones initially were. The government subsequently improved theirs after seeing Pick’s efforts.

    In early 1917, Pick was put in charge of the Household Fuel and Lighting Branch of the Board of Trade, organising the rationing and efficient delivery of household fuels during the shortages of WW1. He was able to return to the Underground Group in May 1919, but initially only part time as he continued to work for the Board of Trade.

    When Albert Stanley, now Lord Ashfield, rose to become Chairman and Managing Director of the Underground Group on 1 February 1921, Pick was made one of his two Assistant Managing Directors. He became Ashfield’s sole Assistant Managing Director in 1924.During the 1920s, Pick co-ordinated the Group’s transport services as well as commissioning up-and-coming poster artists and working with the architect Charles Holden. It was Pick who planned the routes of the southern extension of the Northern line and the northern extension of the Piccadilly line during this period.

    Holden’s first commission for the Underground was to redesign one of the entrances to Westminster station, but Pick then commissioned him to design the stations on the southern extension of the Northern line from Clapham to Morden. Pick’s brief to Holden was that a common theme should run through the stations. However, the sites varied significantly and so this theme would clearly need adjusting for each station. Pick decreed that they should exclude all ornamentation and be merely “a hole in the wall, everything being sacrificed to the doorway,” though he later wrote that they should be “An inviting doorway”.

    An interesting innovation at Clapham South was a widened escalator landing designed to facilitate passenger flow.

    When Piccadilly Circus station, which had a much-increased number of passengers, was rebuilt, Pick came up with the idea for a circular booking hall, which Holden then designed.

    Pick also took an interest in the design of rolling stock. New stock used on the Northern line when it reopened to Clapham Common at the end of 1924 had improved features such as arm-rests, light shades, more cross-seats, and a reduction in noise thanks to a new design of window, smaller than its predecessors and with hardly any rattle. Sliding, air-operated double doors allowed for a wider unobstructed entrance and, arranged to be more accessible, these eased passenger flow.

    Arguably Holden’s greatest single building for the Underground Group, however, was their headquarters at 55 Broadway. Pick asked Holden to consider improving access for the majority of passengers (who approached St James’s Park station, which was part of the same complex, from Victoria Street and who had to walk to the far side of the block in order to reach the station). He asked Holden to design a building occupying the whole of the site and which would contain a passageway leading from the Victoria Street side of the block to the station. Holden’s solution was to construct the building in a cruciform shape and to build a passageway across the whole site.

    The building was begun in 1926 and completed in 1929. Besides solving the problem of public access, Holden made sure the offices were well- lighted by using plenty of glass. Its most controversial feature, however, were statues carved into the building’s facade, and especially those by Jacob Epstein. Epstein’s statues portrayed nudity and were also condemned for bestial and cannibalistic features. Although Pick had reservations about the sculptures, he ultimately stood by the sculptors and their supporter Holden.

    There was a lively board meeting after which Pick tendered his resignation, which was not accepted. The public and press outcry was extraordinary, but eventually died down, and the building was actually awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA’s) London Architectural medal.

    At this time, London’s transport was facing a difficult period. There was still a shortage of buses caused by WW1, and competition with independent bus companies was affecting the Underground Group’s revenue on busy routes. Pick put forward suggestions for a common transport fund and a unified management. This plan was adopted by the government and ultimately led to the nationalisation of local transport in London.

    Pick refused a Knighthood in the 1929 Birthday Honours List. No correspondence survives in government records or the Pick Collection giving the reason for declining the honour.

    The Underground Group was nationalised on 1 July 1933, and Pick became Vice-Chairman (under Lord Ashfield) of its replacement the London Passenger Transport Board.

    Pick remained convinced of the importance of publicity, telling a LT officers’ conference that: “The Board lives and works quite apart from the whole of us who carry on its life and work for it. It will go on when we have all departed from its service. It has become something which has a life and being of its own and that life and being of the Board are best expressed through its publicity.

    “Pick’s concern for a standardised corporate identity within LT led him to personally visit parts of the LT system on Fridays and weekends.But his interest in good design also stretched beyond LT. In 1921 or 1932 (sources vary), he became President of the Design and Industries Association or DIA (of which he had been a founder member in 1915) and in 1933 or 1934 he was appointed Chairman of the Council for Art and Industry. He was also an Honorary Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He did, in fact, campaign for better art and design education, and throughout his career he lectured on design and town planning subjects.

    Pick’s ecletic interests also led to his being a founder member of the Institute of Transport (of which he was President in 1931 and Chairman in 1932), a member of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedures, a member of the London & Home Counties Traffic Advisory Council, and a member of the Crown Lands Advisory Committee.

    From 20 June to 7 July 1930, Pick visited Germany, Holland, Sweden and Denmark with Charles Holden and Lord Ashfield’s Personal Assistant Bill Edwards on an architectural fact-finding mission. This tour was intended to provided inspiration for the stations to be built on a planned northern extension of the Piccadilly line. In a paper entitled “A Note on Contemporary Architecture in Northern Europe”, written on their return, there is an analysis of the development of Greek, Roman and Gothic styles of architecture, and new construction techniques and materials, including the use of a frame of steel or reinforced concrete.

    Pick instructed Holden to redesign Sudbury Town station not long after their return from the Continent. The new construction was influenced by what they had seen in Europe and took the form of a rectangular brick building with a flat roof. However, Pick was not pleased with the automatic machinery which cluttered the platforms and he wrote to the engineer to complain. The design of the new stations due for construction on the northern extension of the Piccadilly line had been placed in the care of a committee. Pick became Chairman of this committee as he wanted to make sure that no similar mistakes were made with the eight new stations serving the extension.

    Russian engineers visited London several times at the design stage of the Moscow Metro to learn from the construction of London’s Underground. A return visit to Moscow was made by London engineers and a Moscow-style vaulted ceiling was included in the design of Gants Hill station. Stalin took the unusual step of awarding Pick, a Westerner, the Honorary Badge of Merit.

    Pick commissioned designs for the seating upholstry (known as moquette) on trains, buses and trams. He picked the best designers of the day, such as Enid Marx, but these designers also had to know something of the actual production process and its limitations. Pick’s commission role here could require great patience in discussing his requirements with both designers and manufacturers. He knew how to deal with designers, realising that if his ideas were met unenthusiastically, there was no point in pushing them as the designer would not produce their best work this way.

    Pick’s role also extended to seeking improved designs for vehicles, equipment and works buildings, including substations and signal cabins.

    Pick interested himself in broader design and planning issues outside LT. He criticised functionalism in architecture because it did not have its own distinctive style, and he campaigned on green issues, expressing support for the creation of national parks and the conservation of the countryside. He also argued in favour of town planning, believing that a city should be laid out to a discernable design and organised so that specific functions were located in particular zones.

    Pick’s health began to decline in the 1930s, to the extent that Lord Ashfield sent him to the Harley Street doctor who attended Ashfield himself. The doctor advised that Pick was under strain and suggested that some of Pick’s duties could perhaps be taken over by other people. However, he also advised Pick to continue working, realising that Pick’s character was such that if he gave up work he would die.

    Following the outbreak of World War Two (WW2), Pick’s position within LT became problematic. A man of strong principles, Pick found himself at odds with Lord Ashfield regarding a government proposal to limit dividend payments on LT stock to a fraction of the minimum rate (Ashfield was in favour of the proposal as were the other attending Board members, but Pick was against it). This clash led to Pick not allowing himself to be considered for his post when his contract expired in May 1940, and he consequently left the organisation.

    Pick was put in charge of the evacuation of London, but following this his talents were unable to find other outlets. He carried out a government enquiry into the Docks and then became Director-General of the Ministry of Information. But his principles brought him trouble once again. He refused to authorise the dropping of some leaflets over Germany in 1940 because he believed that what the leaflets claimed was untrue, and this brought about a clash with Churchill. Once again, Pick was forced to leave his post and this time retire to his home in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

    He undertook a brief survey of Britain’s inland waterways for the Ministry of Transport in 1941 and also wrote two pamphlets at about this time: “Britain Must Rebuild” (1940) and “Paths to Peace” (1941). In the second of these, he argued in favour of public-spiritedness to improve our surroundings, care for our neighbours, and check abuse by those in authority.

    As his doctor had predicted, Pick did not survive long into retirement. He died at his home of a cerebal haemorrhage on 7 November 1941. The design legacy he left London, however, will live on forever.

    Pick was an austere man with few social graces, “but,” Charles Holden recalled, “he was a tower of strength where his sympathies lay.” Though critical, he was “friendly and genial” to travel with and had an understated humour. His attention to detail led him to personally examine every financial account excepting the telephone: he hated telephones so much himself that he could not believe anyone would use one more than was necessary. He had secretaries to type for him, but also handwrote some correspondence in green fountain pen, a personal touch which ensured that the recipient could tell at a glance who had written the letter before seeing the signature.

    Pick’s informing design principle was “fitness for purpose” (the slogan of the DIA). He himself acknowledged he had personal failings: “a short temper, impatience with fools, quickness rather than thoroughness. I am a bad hand at the gracious word or casual congratulation.”

    He must have been difficult to work with on occasions, but working with him had its rewards and his personality encouraged people to endeavour to do their best. Pick’s great achievement was to combine the effective functionalism of everyday objects with good modern design. LT’s design heritage, which it owes to Pick, remains one of the organisation’s greatest assets and its most familiar icon, the roundel, has become a symbol of the city its serves.Lord Latham unveiled a memorial to Frank Pick at his old school, St Peter’s, York in a ceremony on Friday 23 November 1951.

    The memorial reads: ‘In tribute to Frank Pick 1878-1941 a scholar of this school. He served his fellow-men, made transport an art and sought beauty and good design in all things’.

Read more about Frank Pick

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Frank Pick: Beauty < Immortality

7 November 2016, 2 minute read

It's the 75th anniversary of Frank Pick's death. Celebrate some of his greatest accomplishments, which make our lives easier today.

Photo of the Frank Pick Roundel

Frank Pick, Chief Executive of London Transport, was a towering figure who had an unrivalled flair for design management. During his 30-year career, Pick changed the face of London Transport, bringing London’s transport system international acclaim for its architecture, graphic art and design.

Frank Pick sitting in front of a large notebook holding a pen

No need to ask a p’liceman, 1908, by John Hassall

This poster was the first pictorial poster commissioned by Pick for the Underground.

The bold graphic design contrasted sharply with the wordy layout of earlier transport posters. Hassall, an established and popular commercial artist, was an excellent choice to launch the new approach.