Mackintosh and Glasgow Walking Tours
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Mackintosh and Glasgow Walking Tours Welcome to the new series of downloadable walking tours developed by the Mackintosh Heritage Group. These will introduce you to Mackintosh’s architectural heritage and the wider architectural riches of Glasgow, a city described by John Betjeman as the finest Victorian city in the world. Glasgow Style and Modernity Second City The West End Bibliography • Glossary • Links • Acknowledgements • Feedback Glasgow Style and Modernity From Central Station to the School of Art. 24 This walk takes approximately 1½ hours. This walk will look at some of the remarkable architecture in Glasgow created in the years around 1900 when the city was transforming itself into the self-proclaimed ‘Second City of the Empire’. Glasgow, like many other cities at the time, encouraged the development of a progressive modern architecture characterised by a distinctive decorative style. Elsewhere, this is known as art nouveau, Jugendstil or stile Liberty, but here it is now best described as “Glasgow Style”. Its most famous exponent was, of course, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but distinctive buildings were also designed by his friend James Salmon junior, known as the “Wee Troot”. Other architects in the city, like James Miller, were influenced by this 10 manner. In addition there was a separate modern school in the city associated with Sir John James Burnet and his sometime partner J.A. Campbell which was influenced by architecture in both Paris and the United States. Particular and yet international, the remarkable buildings of both schools link fin de siècle Glasgow with what was happening in Paris and Brussels, Barcelona and Chicago, Budapest and Riga. Opening hours are provided for those buildings that are open to the public. These were correct at the time of writing, but you are recommended to check current times to avoid disappointment. Occasionally unforeseen building works may restrict viewing. 18 For further information on Mackintosh and Glasgow visit www.crmsociety.com Tours © The Mackintosh Heritage Group 2. WOODLANDS RD 23 22 COWCADDENS RD SAUCHIEHALL ST 18 24 19 DALHOUSIE ST ROSE ST RENFREW ST BERKELEY STREET 20 CAMBRIDGE ST 15 16 KENT RD NORTH ST SAUCHIEHALL ST 17 21 BLYTHSWOOD SQ BATH ST NEWTON ST W REGENT ST 14 ELMBANK ST W GEORGE ST HOLLAND ST 13 ST VINCENT ST PITT ST6 11 12 DOUGLAS ST 7 HOPE ST 5 WEST NILE ST BOTHWELL ST RENFIELD ST 4 WATERLOO ST 8 10 1 CADOGAN ST 2 GORDON ST 9 INGRAM ST ARGYLE ST 3 BLYTHSWOOD ST W CAMPBELL ST WELLINGTON ST UNION ST MITCHELL ST BUCHANAN ST QUEEN STREET The walk begins atCentral Station , now The Lighthouse. architectural forms seem to have a slight 1 whose spacious top-lit concourse is flavour of the art nouveau, especially Built in 1893-95 and designed by the firm today perhaps the real centre of the city. above the strong cornice. of Honeyman & Keppie, this tall building The terminus of the main line from London has strange details, naturalistic and yet This is particularly true of the corner Euston, the station was greatly extended somehow symbolic, which proclaim it with its oversailing water tower, which by the Caledonian Railway in 1899-1906. an early work by the firm’s new young can seem to resemble a poppy-head. assistant, C.R. Mackintosh. The tower was a necessary precaution Exit via the main entrance (signed to against the threat of fire. The utilitarian 2 Gordon Street) and right into Gordon The building housed the production interior of the Herald building was not Street, which is lined with several stone of the Glasgow Herald newspaper and remarkable and, in 1998-99 was converted Victorian commercial buildings. One of the commercial warehousing. It has two and partially rebuilt by Glasgow architects, most distinctive is the Ca’ D’oro on the external elevations of red sandstone. Page & Park as The Lighthouse: Scotland’s right at the corner of Union Street. Its The style is the Scottish Baroque manner Centre for Architecture, Design and the facades, inspired by Renaissance Venetian conventional for such late 19th-century City. The centre contains a Mackintosh palaces, are in fact constructed of urban buildings, but in Mackintosh’s hands information centre and the water-tower cast-iron. This former furniture warehouse none of the details is strictly conventional. now provides a vantage point giving was designed in 1872 by Mackintosh’s Games are played, as with the windows spectacular views of the cityscape. future employer, John Honeyman. It is now on the staircase bay in the centre of occupied by a supermarket and other retail the Mitchell Street elevation, above the Back up Mitchell Lane, crossing outlets. original entrance at no. 68: each window 4 over into West Nile Street, then left is different in its detailing and projections; at the traffic lights into St Vincent Street. Cross Union Street and continue mouldings are proud of the wall plane on This part of the street is lined with an 3 along Gordon Street. Second right one level, recessed on the next. Window impressive collection of Late Victorian and into Mitchell Street, whose narrow winding shapes vary overall; some are vertical, early 20th-century commercial buildings. length is dominated by the extraordinary some horizontal in proportion; and the On the north side, the striking white red sandstone water-tower on the corner higher the building rises the more the building at no’s 86 – 94, is the former of the former Glasgow Herald Building, For further information on Mackintosh and Glasgow visit www.crmsociety.com Tours © The Mackintosh Heritage Group 3. premises of Northern Assurance by James Hector Guimard and Antoni Gaudi than A. Campbell, a building of 1908-09 with a the starker Glasgow Style work of C.R. pronounced vertical emphasis. Its Mackintosh.…” angularity, with canted bays rising into Everywhere the detail is inventive and towers, might seem to anticipate the Art enjoyable, especially around the entrance Deco of two decades later. which is surmounted by a little oriel The front of the building is faced in white window – balancing a longer one on the Portland stone – the first building in opposite bay – filled with stained-glass Glasgow to use this alien material – but at attributed to Oscar Paterson. Sadly the the rear the steel frame is clad in glazed original mullioned windows have been white brick. As with many commercial replaced with large single panes. Just buildings of this period, it is worth going how extraordinary The Hatrack was, and round to the narrow lane, St Mary’s, at the is, can be seen by looking at its exactly back to see how the architect brought contemporary neighbour to the right, as much light into the interior by having designed by Burnet, Boston & Carruthers: simple canted bays and large steel a decent building with a jolly corner casement windows. turret but somehow staid and dull by comparison. A little further west along St Vincent 5 Street, on the corner of Renfield Back to the street corner and right The plot on which Salmon had to build is 8 Street, is the huge building for the Union narrow and deep, so he adopted a “dumb- down Hope Street. On the left, the Bank (now the Bank of Scotland) designed bell” shaped plan with narrow internal light free-standing building at no.106-108 is the by James Miller’s assistant Richard Gunn. wells to allow light to reach the interior. former premises of the Scottish Built in 1924-27 with its giant Ionic order It is, however, the gravity-defying façade Temperance League, later taken over by and oversailing cornice, it looks as if it were which impresses most, for it appears to the Daily Record newspaper, a cheerful imported whole from Detroit or Chicago. be more glass than wall. But whereas a Franco-Flemish building of 1893-94 by The design, indeed, was based on that of modern glass elevation is usually flat, and Salmon’s partner, J. Gaff Gillespie. But the Guaranty Trust Building in New York. It tedious, Salmon’s is richly sculptural. A what lies immediately behind, around the has nothing whatever to do with the central recess is flanked by two projecting corner in Renfield Lane, is much more Glasgow Style, but it is worth noticing as a canted bays which rise almost the whole interesting and original. refined example of the monumental height of the building, while the recessed Here, in 1901-04, the Daily Record built American Classicism which replaced the upper floor is polygonal. a newspaper printing office designed in local manner as an ideal of modernity. Above that rises a tall concave roof with 1900 by Honeyman & Keppie but clearly the work of the firm’s ambitious assistant, In the distance, at the top of the dormer windows, all enhanced with weird Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The problem 6 hill, on the south side of St Vincent pinnacles – inspiring the affectionate Street, can be seen the distinctive outline nickname of “The Hatrack” for the building. of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson’sSt Vincent The red sandstone stonework was reduced Street Church of 1857-68. to a minimum – an effect achieved by hanging the whole façade on beams Continue along St Vincent Street, cantilevered out from the steel frame 7 again on the north side, to one of the What little stone there is, however, is finest products of the modern-minded made interesting and decorative with Glasgow Style at its most inventive and thin cornices, mannered concavities and original. Just past the junction with Hope ornament in which Baroque details are Street at 144 St Vincent Street is St metamorphosed into what can only be Vincent Chambers, better known as the called art nouveau.