1854 the LNC settled on a single terminus in Waterloo and purchased a plot of land between Westminster Bridge Road and York Street (now Leake Street) for the site. Architect William Tite and engineer William Cubitt drew up a design for a station, which was approved in June 1854. The station was completed in October 1854, at a total construction cost of £23,231 14s 4d (about £ in terms of spending power). On 13 November 1854 the first train left London for the new London Necropolis. Tite and Cubitt's design was based around a three-storey main building, separated from the LSWR's main viaduct by a private access road beneath the LNC's twin rail lines. The private access road was intended to allow mourners to arrive and leave discreetly, and to avoid the need for hearses to stop in the public road. The ground floor contained a grand entrance hall and staircase for mourners attending first and second class funerals, a smaller entrance hall and staircase for those attending lower classes of funeral, and two mortuaries which occupied the majority of the floor. A large room adjacent to the mortuary held a reserve stock of around 300 coffins. Most mourners would have commissioned their own coffins, or used coffins bought by the deceased during their lifetime but, explained an official of the LNC (in 1898) the reserve of coffins was kept so that "should a guest die in a hotel, and the landlord wished to keep it quiet, we are notified, and in the middle of the night we come for the corpse, and take it away in one of our ready-made wooden overcoats". The first floor held the LNC's boardroom, the LNC's funerary workshops, a series of separate waiting rooms for those attending second and third class funerals, and the building's main toilets. The second floor, level with the LSWR railway line, held the train shed covering the two private rail lines and the single platform at which the trains stopped, eight or nine waiting rooms for first class mourners, and further toilets for their use. A steam-powered lift carried coffins from the lower floors to the platform level. A glass roof was positioned in order that no shadow be cast on the hearse carriage waiting at the platform at the time the trains were scheduled to depart, and the western wall was windowless to avoid passengers using the LSWR