How Glasgow's Philistines, not just fires, have robbed the city of many architectural treasures
The ‘Union Corner’ fire has done in an evening what Glasgow Council and its Corporation forerunner have been doing for decades
As was customary in those times, when growing up in Glasgow in the 1960s, every Sunday afternoon was for visiting, the weekly trip to see relatives the reward for attendance at Sunday school. No wonder I hated Sundays.
We lived in King’s Park in South Glasgow and as our family was scattered across the city – Uncle Fred in Anniesland, my mum’s parents in Balornock and my dad’s mother in Dalmarnock – I built a strong picture of the shape of the place, and how it rapidly changed.
From King’s Park to Balornock was a fairly straight line; past the Caledonian Road Church into the Gorbals, past the glamorous-looking Citz, over the Clyde with a glance at the Carrick sailing ship which I imagined was on the point of taking to the high seas, and along the Saltmarket to Glasgow Cross.
Up the High Street, past Provand’s Lordship, the Cathedral and the Royal Infirmary, straight on to Springburn, turn right past the St Rollox railway yards and we were nearly there.
Like New York or Chicago
Sometimes we took a different way back, through Cowcaddens and down Renfield Street, which especially in winter I thought was a thrilling place, with Ba Bru looming through the smog on dark winter nights from behind the dome high above Gordon Street, like some Irn-Bru-fuelled genie. I didn’t know the French called it Film Noir, but I always thought it was like New York or Chicago, the scene of one of those great gangster movies regularly shown on the BBC.
Those routes were severed by the M8 and Ba Bru is long gone, and now so too is the whole of Union Corner – nobody I know ever called it that − thanks to a fire in an unlicensed vape shop. It’s only thanks to good fortune and the efforts of the fire service that the whole of Central Station hasn’t gone too.
As well as how the fire started, there will obviously need to be an investigation into how the place was able to operate illegally, the extent to which this is a council failure and whether the resources allocated to enforcement were and are sufficient.
But whatever the root cause of this one incident, the fire has only done in an evening what Glasgow Council and its Corporation forerunner have been doing for decades, destroying many of the glories at the heart of the city’s heritage.
The list of vandalised or vanished architectural treasures is vast, largely, but not exclusively, because of the decision to drive the M8 through the heart of the city, the debate over which is still raging to this day.
Choking concrete jungle
This week train passengers hoping to alight at Glasgow Central’s low-level station were advised to get off at Anderston, where they emerge into the choking concrete jungle beneath the Kingston Bridge instead of the busy Clydeside community it used to be. Reminders, like the tenement home of the famous Buttery restaurant, are surrounded by the motorway and soulless apartment blocks.
The disgrace that is Sauchiehall Street gets all the attention, and Charing Cross stands as probably the worst example of 1960s civic barbarism in the name of progress, but that’s just the start of a trail of urban philistinism unthinkable in most other major European cities.
All that’s left of St George’s Cross is the dragon-slaying statue lost beneath a flyover. Cowcaddens bears no resemblance to the subject of Alasdair Gray’s famous 1950s painting, and Townhead was crushed beneath the tarmac.
Provand’s Lordship was moved brick by brick but lost all sense of historic context, and St Enoch’s Square has never recovered from the demolition of the old station, the tired shopping centre not masking the scar which runs to what should be the cherished heart of old Glasgow, not home to a legalised heroin-shooting gallery.
Roads and rubble
Like Dalmarnock, the Gorbals slums were probably unsavable, but what replaced them lost all sense of place, with the Citizens Theatre and Greek Thomson’s crumbling Caledonian Road Church left as reminders that this was once a community with a lot more to it that than razor gangs and reeking back court middens.
And then there’s Springburn. I took many trips down Springburn Road with my grandparents to buy ice cream at the café at the foot of the Balgrayhill and only the Balgray Tower remains. What was a solid, attractive district turned to roads and rubble, the church where my parents were married and I was christened is long gone. Springburn Park’s once beautiful Winter Garden remains derelict.
For me, Springburn, Dalmarnock, Bridgeton, the Gorbals, Townhead and Cowcaddens all have one thing in common; I knew them all well as a boy and now I have no idea where I am on the few occasions I go through. Springfield Road, where my mum worked in the Co-op pharmacy, is recognisable only from the street name sign.
‘We will rebuild’
With the remaining facade of Union Corner to be demolished, what will become of the site? What is now a pile of smouldering rubble is likely to remain derelict for years as the inquiry rumbles on and insurance companies, business owners, the council and the Scottish Government fight it out over a bill which will run into many millions.
The portents are not good. The future of Greek Thomson’s Egyptian Halls across Union Street is still uncertain after decades of argument, the unique Rennie Mackintosh art school remains a shell after its catastrophic fires, same for the ABC, and the People’s Palace seems under perpetual threat.
Yes, shiny new buildings are appearing in Tradeston, but the signs of decay are everywhere. “We will rebuild. We will restore, and Glasgow will flourish again," First Minister John Swinney told the Scottish Parliament this week. It’s about time someone did.
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