My blog this week is in tribute to Robert Bruce, the City Engineer of Glasgow from 1941 to 1948, who, like his namesake, was a man of courage and vision. In response to the city’s chronic housing problems, he proposed the demolition and redevelopment of the entire centre of the city, with the displaced families moved to new “satellite settlements” around its edge such as Easterhouse, Castlemilk and Drumchapel. His plan included the demolition of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art, Willow Tea Rooms and Glasgow Herald Building, Alexander Thomson’s St Vincent Street Church, Egyptian Halls, Grosvenor Building, Grecian Chambers and Bucks Head Building, JJ Burnet’s Athenaeum, Glasgow Savings Bank Hall, Waterloo and Atlantic Chambers, Rowand Anderson’s Central Station Hotel, James Miller’s Commercial and Union Banks of Scotland, his Anchor Line Building and Central Station, James Salmon Jnr’s Hatrack and Lion Chambers as well as major works by John Burnet Snr, John Campbell, James Sellars, John Honeyman and Charles Wilson and of course including, William Young’s Glasgow City Chambers. The city’s historic grid plan was to be swept away too, to give its citizens “more elbow room” and to complete his nightmare fantasy, the entire new city centre was to be ringed with a motorway.
His proposals were enthusiastically backed by the City Council and launched with an exhibition at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall where the vast model of his masterplan was displayed, (above) accompanied by a promotional film “Glasgow Today and Tomorrow” (covered by British Pathe News and available on YouTube). All the movers and shakers were on board and for a few months it seemed that Robert Bruce would be taking Glasgow fast forward into the future. Fortunately, it was fairly quickly established that his Mickey Mouse Metropolis was completely unaffordable, so Glasgow as a city was saved and when people now hear the names Robert and Bruce they think of Bannockburn, rather than what would have been perhaps the greatest act of civic vandalism ever contemplated.
John Stewart 