The station was opened on 13 April 1868 as '''St. John's Wood Road'''. It was on the Metropolitan and St John's Wood Railway, the first northward branch extension from
Baker Street to
Swiss Cottage of the
Metropolitan Railway (MR), the precursor of today's
Metropolitan line. The station was located at the junction of St. John's Wood Road,
Wellington Road and Park Road. The original station building was cramped and unable to cope with peak demand during matches at the nearby
Lord's Cricket Ground. It was demolished and reconstructed in 1924–25, to a design by the MR's architect
Charles W. Clark, with a larger building that enclosed the space above the platforms with a concrete slab to form a parking garage under the original glazed platform roof. Upon reopening, the station's name was shortened to '''St. John's Wood
on 1 April 1925. It was renamed again, as Lord's''', on 11 June 1939. In the mid-1930s the Metropolitan line was suffering congestion at the south end of its main route, where trains from its many branches shared the limited capacity between
Finchley Road and Baker Street. To ease this congestion, deep-level tunnels were built between Finchley Road station and the
Bakerloo line tunnels at Baker Street station. On 20 November 1939, the Metropolitan line's service to
Stanmore was transferred to the Bakerloo line and diverted to Baker Street via the new tunnels. A new Bakerloo line station named
St John's Wood was opened to replace Lord's station. It had been the intention of the Underground's management to close Lord's station to normal services, but retain it for temporary use during top-class cricket matches; the advent of the
Second World War led this plan to be abandoned, and the station closed permanently after the last train on 19 November 1939. The surface building survived until the late 1960s, when it was demolished. The site is now occupied by a hotel. An emergency access point existed as of 2004 and a stairwell went to a piece of the platform remaining at the trackside as a result of it. ==See also==