Brent Cross station was designed by Stanley Heaps and is now a Grade II-listed building. It was the first station on the extension of what was then the Hampstead & Highgate line, planned prior to World War I when the intention had been to call it Woodstock.

The station originally opened in 1923 as Brent, after the nearby river, but was renamed in 1976 for Brent Cross Shopping Centre – the biggest in the UK at the time.