The Beatles at Abbey Road is an image so iconic that it appears on notebooks in the Back to School section of Walmart (and, no doubt, its British arm – Asda). These products target children who weren't born when The Beatles were recording, but still require no explanation. The zebra crossing (pedestrian crossing) and nearby Abbey Road studios are among the most well-known pop music images in existence. They're also designated landmarks.
English Heritage granted the studios listed building, or historic landmark, status in 2010, seven years after first putting forth the nomination. The Abbey Road crosswalk was listed later that same year.
The historic studios are located at 3 Abbey Road, Saint John's Wood, London, in the NW8 postcode. Their website, abbeyroad.com, features the pedestrian crossing prominently and acknowledges the fame that The Beatles brought by recording there from 1962 to 1969. In fact, the group's presence changed the operating hours of the studio, since they wouldn't leave until they were done -- no matter how late that was.
The selection of the studios and their crosswalk, from an annual list of two thousand nominations, really isn't surprising. A Westminster County Council plaque already explains that Abbey Road Studios were opened on November 12 1931 by Sir Edward Elgar, the same gentleman who composed "Pomp and Circumstance." (The composition's best-known theme, "Land of Hope and Glory," always triumphantly concludes the Last Night of the Proms.) Thus, listing came just in time for the studios' 80th birthday in 2011.
Age notwithstanding, Abbey Road Studios are also associated with George Martin, have housed such notables as Radiohead and Cilla Black, and have provided theme music for “Harry Potter” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The English Heritage entry also explains that, while much altered, Abbey Road was the earliest custom-built recording studio in the world.
Meanwhile, of course, the Beatles made the zebra crossing famous. They didn't even feel the need to add the title of the "Abbey Road" album to its cover; the image spoke for itself. The studios represent living history, but the pedestrian crossing captures a moment in time and the end of an era -- the last album the Fab Four ever recorded there.
England's listing system began in 1950 and, in those years, it was typical to see 500 new structures added a month. But in, for example, 2011, fewer than a thousand sites showed up in a date-based search, and many of those were not new additions, but changes to existing ones. In the beginning, it was important to list thousands of years' worth of structures and artifacts as quickly as posisble, but now it's generally only structures built in the 19th and 20th centuries that get looked at, and they have to be pretty special. Only in the last decade or so have such modern takes as the Beatles at Abbey Road pedestrian crossing and studios started to find their way into the lists.
When English Heritage dabbled in a Britain-wide blue plaques scheme before ultimately deciding to stick with London, it placed a plaque on John Lennon's childhood home in Liverpool. In 2010, Yoko Ono unveiled another one on their former London home at 34 Montagu Square, Marylebone. In time, George, Paul and Ringo will also receive plaques; it's not as though formal historic recognition has bypassed The Beatles. But, even so, the choice of turning the famous pedestrian crossing into a landmark marks a new era. It's not just a whole new way of considering historic value, but also immortalizes the already-immortal Beatles at Abbey Road.
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Sources: Abbey Road Studios, English Heritage
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