Glasgow, The Grand Hotel, Charing Cross 1897

Photo ref: 39768

More about this scene

Glasgow began its westward expansion in the late 1830s, when fine terraces were laid out along Sauchiehall Street to Charing Cross and beyond. A similar development ran northwards along Woodlands Road. Unlike the 18th-century grid plan, the expansion of the 1830s and 1840s tended to follow contours and natural features, and the great terraces were fronted by gardens surrounded by railings. The occupiers of the dwellings had access to these 'pleasure gardens' screened by trees. By contrast, Argyle Street, belonging to a previous generation of building, had no green spaces at all, and the solitary tree that towered over the tenements of Sandyford is believed to have begun as a tiny seedling which a boy brought back from a jaunt into the countryside. Blythswood Square, lying to the south of Sauchiehall Street, was the first of the city squares laid out as a formal garden. George Square in the city centre, on the other hand, was originally no more than a pasture for the cows that provided fresh milk for the city dwellers, but by the 1850s it was almost entirely paved over and became the location for statues of the great and good. Originally George Square had terraces of dwelling houses on all four sides, but they were demolished from 1869 onwards and their place taken by the great public buildings occupied by the Bank of Scotland, the General Post Office, the Merchants House and the City Chambers (completed in 1890), one of the most lavish municipal buildings to be found anywhere in the United Kingdom. Ironically, the only vestige of the original late Georgian houses is to be found on the north side of the square, where the terrace of 1807 was converted at the end of the century to become the North British Hotel (now renamed the Copthorne) fronting Queen Street Station.