St. Vincent's Street... drunk firemen and Kafka...

                      

           Number 200 St. Vincent’s Street.

This building was formerly known as the North British and Mercantile Insurance Building and was designed, again, by J.J. Burnet. It is an imposing building, more like a fortress than an office which, I am sure, is no coincidence, the insurance company implying that you will be safe in their hands, protected. The windows are small and rectangular, set back from the façade. I have never been in the building but I imagine not much light filters through. The front of the building has two figures above and on either side of the doorway. One – the one above - is called the Seafarer, the other is the Seafarer’s Wife. They were designed and executed by Mortimer, Wilson & Graham. These figures were not added until 1953. Wilson had trained under the sculptor Archibald Dawson and the figures are a portrait of Dawson and his wife Isa. Archibald Dawson had been responsible for the first phase of sculpture on the building which is a figure of St. Andrew, high and central on the façade. The building was completed in 1929 and underwent extensive internal remodelling in 1987. It was Burnet’s last design in Scotland.

            I remember the first time I noticed the building over twenty-five years ago. The sun was low and the building was lit by a side-light that shadowed the windows and made them appear like black holes. With the figures looming down imposingly it looked to me like the sort of insurance office Kafka might have worked in. The North British and Mercantile Insurance Company was founded in Edinburgh in 1809 and was originally founded as a fire insurance company. I wonder if they were the insurers Dr Pritchard, the human crocodile, tried to con after he set fire to his house in Berkeley Street when he murdered Elizabeth McGirn? In the 1860s the company had offices all over the world including Asia and Africa, specifically insuring members if the Civil Service at preferential rates. In 1901 it extended its business to include all marine risk, which explains the seafarer and his wife on the façade. The first major fire in the company’s history occurred in Glasgow on June 4^th 1810, the King’s birthday. A firework, which was part of a display to celebrate the occasion, entered a window of Aitken & Company, a dry goods warehouse on Glassford Street. The fire caused serious damage which wasn’t helped by the fact that many of the firemen had been toasting the King: ‘The fire engines were soon on the spot, but, unfortunately, and to the great disgrace of the Glasgow Police, under whose management they were, they were in such a miserable state of disorder, and the firemen all drunk… that they were of no use, and the fire was literally allowed to burn and thereby occasion a loss of many thousands of pounds, which otherwise could have amounted to only a few hundreds.’ (Report to Directors)

            The building looks severe and cold with its windows like sightless eyes and yet the faces of the figures have an expression of gentleness and sympathy. There is something ecclesiastical about the figures and they are reminiscent of some of those on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. It’s not surprising to discover that Mortimer, Wilson & Graham were also responsible for church statuary, including a figure at St Simon’s in Partick and statues, carvings and Stations of the Cross for churches by Jack Coia.