Lesser Known Architecture: London's most unappreciated buildings Crystal Palace Subway It reminds me of a cellar designed by Gaudi in Barcelona. It's an incredible place. An eerie and tragic monument to colossal Victorian hubris. I used to go there 30 years ago. I was 13. We got chased by insane glue sniffing skin heads and punks with mohawks. These are some of the memories Londoners have of the Crystal Palace Subway, an extraordinary pedestrian underpass of octagonal columns fashioned from cream and orange brickwork. It is one of the few elements of the vast exhibition complex to have survived the great inferno of 1936 that left Joseph Paxton's glass and iron marvel in ashes. Yet much like the parmesan cheese Samuel Pepys buried underground during the Great Fire of 1666, it is a rare delicacy few will have sampled. Today, and for more than 20 years now, it has been closed to the public. A community group however is working hard to have it reopened. The fan-vaulted structure was built in 1865 by Italian craftsman under the guidance of Edward Middleton Barry, who also designed the now-demolished high level station that served Crystal Palace following its relocation from Hyde Park a decade before. Variously described as Italianate, Byzantine and, as noted above, as like something from the mind of the Catalan Antoni Gaudi, the subway should more fittingly be seen as a sign of London's transformation: into the pre-eminent world capital it was becoming then, remains so today, and one that could confidentially mix styles to create a unique aesthetic of its own. To have wandered through its capacious hall, past rows of sprouting columns, to emerge into a courtyard with views towards Paxton's gleaming palace above, and to have done so as an ordinary man, woman or child, and not as a king, queen or prince... Well, you might have had a sense that the world around you was beginning to feel just a little more fair. Rory Olcayto is the deputy editor of 'The Architects" Journal'