Charing Cross Mansion |
Charing Cross Mansions is said to be the
first building in Glasgow built in red sandstone and, other than the
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which is not a residential building, is
arguably one of the most-grand buildings in Glasgow. Unlike the Art Gallery & Museum, the Charing Cross building
was designed by not only a Scotsman but a Glaswegian, John James Burnet. Burnet
had studied under the famous French designer Jean-Louis Pascal at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts in Paris. And it shows. The mansions are in the French-Renaissance
style, curving around the corner which connects Sauchiehall Street with St. George’s
Road, with a spire rising from its central frontage to balance the sweep of the
whole. The central clock was another clock on which the
hands had stopped. When I lived in the mansions for a period of six months it
was always midnight. Some might argue, midnight or midday, but given
that I was twenty-five at the time and the mansions sit on the corner of
Sauchiehall Street with its pubs, casino, late-night restaurants and
take-aways, it was always midnight for me. And as this was a period
of my life when I was also gloriously idle having just returned from sea with
enough money to indulge myself for a while, I seldom saw midday unless it was
to close the curtains which I had left open the night before and go back to bed.
I expect the clock is working now.
Burnet was born in 1857 and died in
1938. His birthplace was not far from the mansions, only a short walk-away
at Blythswood Hill. His father had also been a prominent architect who designed a
number of great Glasgow buildings and whose name will crop up later. John
James’s father and mother were Congregationalists, part of the Protestant
church in which each congregation runs its own affairs, independently and
autonomously. I bring his religion up not because it is unavoidable in Glasgow
but because it seems odd to me that a man from such a puritan-inspired background
should design such a flamboyant building. Burnet’s parents did not want their son to study in a Catholic country, especially as the Paris Commune
was governing when young Burnet suggested the move. But, by the end of the
year, the Commune was supressed by the French Army, and the Third Republic under
its first President, Adolphe Thiers, was declared and Burnet began his studies the
following year. As well as the French-Renaissance style, Burnet was also
inspired by Italian Baroque and contemporary American architecture which he had seen on his visits to the United States in 1896, and again in 1908 and 1910.
Burnet
had more than a few prestigious contracts. In 1906 he received the contract from
the British Museum to design the Edward VII Galleries. If Burnet had his way,
he would have demolished a section of Bloomsbury to build a grand
Parisian-style avenue, but money ran out and only the Galleries were finished. After the First World War he took a leading role in designing war
memorials commissioned by the Imperial War Graves Commission and his work is
found in Gallipoli, Palestine and Suez. Despite his success and honours, Burnet
did not die a happy man. His health was poor, he had disagreements with business partners and there was a financial scandal at the Glasgow
office. He seems to have retired reluctantly, unable to meet the physical
demands of work he clearly loved. He has a considerable legacy of buildings
still standing in Glasgow, as has his father, and between them, Glasgow owes a
great deal of its peculiar beauty to their determination to design the best
buildings they could and as they saw fit, which is far more than can be said for a
particular period of philistinism which ruled at Glasgow Council almost until
the 1980s and has had such a detrimental impact on the city and on the work of both Burnet.
Burnet’s
father-in-law, James David Marwick, also played a considerable part in the
history of Glasgow. He was Town Clark for thirty-one years up till the late 19th
century, during a period when the City was completely transformed, a transformation most of
which he guided. Despite the fact that Glasgow owes such a great deal to the
Burnets and Marwick, as far as I'm aware they have no monument other than
the buildings designed and commissioned by them which are still standing. Glasgow’s
George Square has four statues; of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, James Watt, and Sir Robert Peel. I can understand why James Watt is there – he was an
instrument maker at the University of Glasgow where his interest in
steam engines first began and which has led to his lasting fame. As for the others, I would, grudgingly, allocate a place to Burns, but Scott belongs in Edinburgh and I have no idea what the rationale behind a
statue to Sir Robert Peel was. The Square and the City Chambers as we see them
today were more or less completed in 1889. Perhaps it was too soon to include a
statue of the still living Marwick or Burnet Senior, although I’m certain they
weren’t even considered. As for Burnet junior, his monument might have been the
City Chambers building itself but his submission for the design was rejected in
favour of that by William Young of Paisley, whose only notable design is
the City Chambers. If ever George Square is redeveloped I’d suggest getting rid
of Peel and Scott and replacing them with Marwick and Burnet Jr. I never liked
Scott’s long-winded novels of a romanticised Scottish history designed for an English audience. If a
Scottish literary figure should be memorialised at George Square then I'd opt for someone more relevant to the City and more deserving on the score of literary
merit, someone like Tobias Smollett who was born not far from the City in West
Dunbartonshire and educated at the University of Glasgow. The irony of
Smollett’s situation is that he is among sixteen Scottish authors depicted on
the lower portion of Scott’s monument in Edinburgh. I blame the English, with
whom Scott was very popular, and the Anglified taste of Edinburgh, for whom
Smollett was too anarchic. A more fitting monument to Smollett than as a
footnote beneath Scott is to found in the south of France where a street in
Nice has been named after him. Vive La France!
I admit a bias towards Burnet, probably occasioned by personal associations. Not only do I have happy memories of my stay in Charing Cross Mansion but I once worked,
briefly, at Glasgow University, in a building directly adjacent to another
Burnet design – the Glasgow University Zoology Department. It was winter and,
when the weather was fine, I would have a coffee and a smoke outside, sitting directly across from this building which
dated from 1922. Its American influence is obvious. With the low winter sun on
its pale stonework the building looked like a prop from an Edward Hopper
painting. I found the building, its stones, its lines, the shape of its
windows, its entranceway, very conducive to day-dreaming. I never went inside and I’m glad I didn’t. The notion of a building dedicated to Zoology filled my
imagination with all sorts of wonders as to what the interior might contain. I
pictured a zoological Indiana Jones collecting rare and obscure specimens from
all over the world and I didn’t want the reality to disappoint. The Zoology
building is not a famous building. It is tucked out of the way, seen only by
students, visitors, academics and other university staff who might be inclined
to pay it any attention. But it is worth looking at and easily found. Wander up
Byres Road, take a right turn at University place and on the second right, just
before it joins University Avenue, there is an entrance generally used for
University vehicles. A short walk from there takes you to the Zoology building
on the right-hand side. No one will stop you or ask you what you’re looking
for. They’re a very friendly lot. They might even let you take a look inside.
Don’t do it. Be content with the façade and the possibility of what might be
inside – the luminescent feather of an Alicanto bird, the third leg from the
Yatagarasu, the coat of a blue tiger, or the 80ft skin of the Anaconda caught
by Sir Percy Fawcett on his penultimate trip up the Amazon. Who knows? If you
don’t go inside to be disappointed anything is possible.
The worst thing about living at Charing Cross
Mansions was the view. My living room looked out on an ugly orange coloured
branch of the Clydesdale bank built in 1980 by the architectural firm of Walter
Underwood & Partners. The only thing which distracts from the ugliness of
this building is the M8 motorway running directly past it and which is
responsible for the bank’s existence. I don’t know if Walter Underwood himself
was responsible for the design but if he was, he was clearly more of a
businessman than an architect. No one with the slightest aesthetic sense would
have designed such a thing. It is immensely ugly, in fact, a new category of
ugliness should be invented for it. It is as if it were designed in an act of
will-full perversity to be as ugly as possible by a sociopath who hated
buildings, hated architecture, and wanted to punish everyone passing by who was forced to look upon it. If it disappeared tomorrow no one would lament the loss. It is
anti-architecture, architecture of irrelevance.
Glasgow Council's Urban Improvement of Charing Cross. |
St. George's Mansions |
I
once worked with a man from Dublin who visited Glasgow with his girlfriend. He
said they had wandered around the centre of the city and along Sauchiehall
Street until they came to Charing Cross. When they saw the motorway, they
thought there would be very little beyond and turned back, such was the barrier they saw before them. I told him he had
been only minutes from the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum, Byres Road,
University Avenue and the University buildings, the Hunterian Museum and the
Botanic Gardens.
I know of another curious incident related to the M8 and Charing
Cross Mansions. A pedestrian footbridge was built behind the Clydesdale bank to
link Woodside Crescent to Renfrew Street, making it easier for people to cross
the busy junction where my Irish friend turned back. The footbridge passes the left corner of Charing Cross
Mansions. At that point, the mansions have a rounded turret-like structure. I
lived across the landing from one of these flats with the rounded room. After the old woman who had lived there all her life, her parents having lived there before her, died, the flat underwent extensive renovation. I had become friendly with a couple of
the builders and went for a pint with them now and again. One day, they told me they had made an amazing discovery. In
stripping the old wallpaper in the hallway, they had found a doorway blocked up by plywood.
They tore the wood away, opened the door and found a room which had been sealed-up for at least
thirty years. It was the round room which faced out onto the footbridge. No one
had thought to wonder where the room in the turret had disappeared to. When told about it, the old
woman’s son remembered that his mother had the room sealed when the bridge was built. Because of its height and close proximity to the building, people
crossing the bridge could look directly in on it. She had no further use for the
room and it had been concealed so long ago that everyone in the family had
forgotten about it.
Corner round tower of Charing Cross Mansions |
A random shooting once took place at the Charing Cross corner of Sauchiehall Street in the
early 1990s. I remember it because I had walked past the spot a few minutes
before the shots were fired and I had heard them after I had passed and wondered what the noise was. I was with an old girlfriend
at the time. We had just returned to Glasgow on the train from Stranraer which meets the ferry from Ireland. The
train had been late arriving, it was the early hours of the morning, the
streets were busy with the Saturday night crowd and hundreds of English fans
who were in Glasgow for an International game that had been played that day. We
couldn’t get a taxi anywhere. We decided to walk from Central Station along
Sauchiehall Street hoping to find a taxi in the rank outside the casino at
Charing Cross, but there was none. At that time there was a burger van across
the intersection. I was hungry. Rather than wait at the taxi rank outside the
casino we went there. The shots came while we were sitting eating hot-dogs at a
lop-sided old fountain outside the ugly Clydesdale bank I mentioned earlier.
Six people were injured and one died, a student. The shots were fired
indiscriminately before the gunman turned the gun on himself. Reports said he
had a Browning 9mm automatic. I once fired a Browning 9mm automatic. It carries
13 rounds and is very powerful for such a small weapon. The shooter was a man
who lived with his elderly parents. He was 24 at the time of the shooting.
Predictably, he was described as ‘a loner who kept himself to himself’. His
sole companion, it seems, was his dog. He was not a friendly sort who would
chat with his neighbours. They didn’t like him. He died in hospital of his self-inflicted wounds and no one
knows what provoked the attack.
The
girlfriend I was with at the time made no big deal about the fact that we were
only minutes away from the shooting and might even have been involved if we had
lingered there or taken a little longer to walk along the road. She wasn’t one
to over-dramatize things like that. We hadn’t been involved and that was good
enough for her. I liked that quality about her.
Was it this event that the photographer was drawing attention to? It seemed improbable. But then, Charing Cross was what Jack House called the very centre of the Square Mile of Murder.
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