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Alexander Thomson’s St Vincent Street Church looking good in this view, just don’t get too close. #alexanderthomson #alexanderthomsonsociety #alexanderthomsongreek #alexandergreekthomson #glasgowarchitecture #scottisharchitecture #church #churchesofinstag
This St Vincent Street church is best known as Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's sole surviving place of worship in the city. All the pews and gallery facings are made from a very attractive North American pine.
The GCFC is a Presbyterian denomination of the Free Church of Scotland and have been tenants here since 1971, and want to stay, and are urgently trying to encourage the landlord, Glasgow City Council, and other interested bodies to spend much needed funds on the all aspects of this unique building
This St Vincent Street church is best known as Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's sole surviving place of worship in the city. Though the pews and gallery facings are made entirely from a North American pine which is quite light, I couldn’t resist this much darker rendition.
The GCFC is a Presbyterian denomination of the Free Church of Scotland and have been tenants here since 1971, and want to stay, and are urgently trying to encourage the landlord, Glasgow City Council, and other interested bodies to spend much needed funds on the all aspects of this unique building
This steep stone staircase is the famous Sixty Steps, by a great, curved retaining wall, connecting Kelvinside Terrace to the streets on the slopes above. Kelvinside Terrace, as the name implies, runs right alongside the River Kelvin, and the Steps are part of what remains of the original Queen Margaret Bridge structure over the river in Glasgow's West End, near the Botanic Gardens.
Directly in front of this early 1870s structure is where the bridge itself stood, replaced in the 20th century by the current bridge on busy Queen Margaret Drive, which runs right past the Botanics and down towards the university, of the original bridge all that remains are the end pieces of the bridge and this substantial, towering retaining wall and the Steps, all by the great Alexander "Greek" Thomson, the architect responsible for a number of the exceptionally fine Victorian buildings in Glasgow.
Architect: Alexander "Greek" Thomson, 1857-59.
Now with rampant Buddleia, and in need of restoration.
Holmwood House is the finest and most elaborate residential villa designed by the Scottish architect Alexander "Greek" Thomson. It is also rare in retaining much of its original interior decor, and being open to the public. Quoted from Wikipedia
This St Vincent Street church is best known as Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's sole surviving place of worship in the city.
The GCFC, a Presbyterian denomination of the Free Church of Scotland, have been tenants here since 1971, and want to stay, and are urgently trying to encourage the landlord, Glasgow City Council, and other interested bodies to spend much needed funds on this unique building.
The basement doorway, set in a huge blank wall, shows characteristic "Greek" Thomson detailing: the lintel above the windows and door with its erupting flowers, and the almost Art Deco capitals of implied pillars.
Architect: Alexander "Greek" Thomson, 1857-59.
By renowned architect Alexander Thomson (A and G Thomson), 1864-66; with later additional storeys by J H Craigie, 1902-07. 1st-3rd floors with his distinctive Greek details; additional storeys by Cragie. 6 storeys and attic with modern shops at ground floor. 15 bays. Polished ashlar. Mostly casement windows.
The Grosvenor Building was originally designed by “Greek” Thomson as commercial premises with shops below, for Alexander & George Thomson. It was burnt down shortly after it was completed in 1859 but rebuilt in 1864-66. This Gordon Street building caught fire again in 1901 and when rebuilt in 1907 took its current name from the Grosvenor Restaurant. The building again had a fire in 1967. The Grosvenor building was built on the site of the Gordon Street United Presbyterian Church. Only the façade remained when a development occurred in 1992.
Kardinia House is one of the oldest major residences in Geelong. Alexander Thomson had his flocks of sheep along the Barwon River in 1836. He soon replaced his slab hut with a stone mansion built 1854. Dr Thomson became the first Mayor of Geelong in 1850. The house at 1 Riverview Terrace Belmont had extensive additions made to it in 1869. It was extended again in the 1880s by a local businessman who owned it then leaving no sight of the 1855 house. He added then popular bay windows and a veranda etc. In the 20th century for some time it was used as a Salvation Army Childrens’ Home from 1947 to 1986. It catered mainly for two to five year old children. The house was last sold in 2019 with about 4 acres of gardens facing the Barwon River.
1-11 Great Western Terrace: In the mid-1800s, the boom in Glasgow’s population caused by the Industrial Revolution pushed development west, as the upper classes sought to leave the areas inundated with migrant workers. Developers paid handsomely for the best architects to design grand buildings to attract the outflow of the rich into the new area of wealth. Alexander “Greek” Thomson was in high demand, and in 1867 he was drafted to design the grandest terrace in Glasgow for builder William Henderson and landowner James Whitelaw Anderson. Henderson died in 1870, leaving Anderson to foot the bill. Thomson saw eight of the houses completed before he himself passed away in 1875, with the remaining three completed two years later.
Apart from the Ionic columns, the building’s exterior lacks many of Thomson’s motifs possibly because it was one of his last works, or that he was restrained from decoration by the builder. Nevertheless, they are an exquisite example of Victorian architecture, and Great Western Terrace was home to many of Glasgow’s rich and famous. Sir William Burrell occupied No.8, retired tobacco merchant James W. MacGregor lived at No.4, and publisher Robert Blackie had Thomson himself decorate No.7. [discoveringglasgow.org ]
Alexander ("Greek") Thomson
Architect (1817 - 1875) by John Mossman - 1877
[Born on April 9, 1817, Balfron. Died on March 22, 1875, Glasgow)
The Glasgow Institute of Architects set up The Alexander Thomson Memorial immediately following his death. This marble bust by John Mossman was presented to the Corporation Galleries, Sauchiehall Street in 1877, and is now on display in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. From Wikepedia
Alexander "Greek" Thomson (9 April 1817 – 22 March 1875) was an eminent Scottish architect and architectural theorist who was a pioneer in sustainable building. Although his work was published in the architectural press of his day, it was little appreciated outwith Glasgow during his lifetime. It has only been since the 1950s and 1960s that his critical reputation has revived—not least of all in connection with his probable influence on Frank Lloyd Wright.
Henry-Russell Hitchcock wrote of Thomson in 1966: “Glasgow in the last 150 years has had two of the greatest architects of the Western world. C.R.Mackintosh was not highly productive but his influence in central Europe was comparable to such American architects as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. An even greater and happily more productive architect, though one whose influence can only occasionally be traced in America in Milwaukee and in New York and not at all as far as I know in Europe, was Alexander Thomson.”
Early life
Thomson was born in the village of Balfron in Stirlingshire. The son of John Thomson, a bookkeeper, and Elizabeth Cooper Thomson, he was the ninth of twelve children. His father, who already had eight grown children from his previous marriage, died when Alexander was seven. The family consequently moved to the outskirts of Glasgow, but tragedy struck when the eldest daughter, Jane, and three of her brothers died between 1828 and 1830, the year that Alexander's mother died. The remaining children moved with one of the older brothers, William, a teacher, and his wife and child to Hangingshaw, just south of Glasgow. The Thomson boys all worked from a young age, but the children were also home schooled. It is believed that Alexander worked in a lawyer's office, possibly Wilson, James, and Kays, where his older brother, Ebenezer, was employed as a bookkeeper and where he later became a partner in the business.
Career
Alexander was eventually apprenticed to Glasgow architect Robert Foote, ultimately gaining a place in the office of John Baird as a draughtsman. In 1848 Thomson set up his own practice, Baird & Thomson, with John Baird II, who became his brother-in-law, and this firm lasted nine years. In 1857, as "the rising architectural star of Glasgow,"[3] he entered into practice with his brother George where he was to enjoy the most productive years of his life. He served as president of both the Glasgow Architectural Society and the Glasgow Institute of Architects. Thomson was an elder of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and his deep religious convictions informed his work. There is a strong suggestion that he closely identified Solomon’s temple with the plan of the Greek basilica.
He produced a diverse range of structures including villas, a castle, urbane terraces, commercial warehouses, tenements, and three extraordinary churches. Of these, Caledonia Road Free Church (1856–57 - now a ruin), Queen's Park United Presbyterian Church (1869 - destroyed in WWII), and St Vincent Street Church (1859), the last is the only intact survivor. Hitchcock once stated, “[Thomson has built] three of the finest Romantic Classical churches in the world”. Thomson developed his own highly idiosyncratic style from Greek, Egyptian and Levantine sources and freely adapted them to the needs of the modern city.
At the age of 34, Thomson designed his first and only castle, Craigrownie Castle, which stands at the tip of the Rosneath Peninsula in Cove, overlooking Loch Long. The six-storey structure is Scots Baronial in style, featuring a central tower with battlements, steep gables and oriel windows, in addition to a chapel and a mews cottage.
Thomson's villa designs were realized at Langside, Pollokshields, Helensburgh, Cove, the Clyde Estuary, and on the Isle of Bute. His "mature villas are Grecian in style while resembling no other Greek Revival houses,...[and they] are dominated by horizontal lines and rest on a strong podium." According to Gavin Stamp, "Thomson carefully designed his villas with symmetries within an overall an overall asymmetry in a personal language in which the horizontal discipline of a continuous governing order—whether expressed or implied—was never abandoned. Regarding similarities to Frank Lloyd Wright, Stamp states, "It has often been remarked that there are clear resemblances between the early houses of the Prairie School and Thomson's horizontally massed design, with its low-pitched gables and spreading eaves -- together with a connecting garden." As Sir John Summerson noted, "There is something wildly 'American' about Thomson -- a 'New World' attitude. You can see it in the villas...a sort of primitivism, ultra-Tuscan."
Later in his career he would abandon his eclecticism and adopt the purely Ionic Greek style for which he is best known, as such he is perhaps the last in a continuous tradition of British Greek Revival architects. In attacking the Gothic, he "insisted that 'Stonehenge is really more scientifically constructed than York Minster'...[alluding to] Pugin's comment that in their temples 'the Greeks erected their columns like the uprights of Stonehenge'." Other important works still standing include Moray Place, Great Western Terrace, Egyptian Halls in Union Street, Grosvenor Building, Buck's Head Building in Argyle Street, Grecian Buildings in Sauchiehall Street, Walmer and Millbrae Crescents, and his villa, Holmwood House, at Cathcart.
Grave monuments designed by Thomson that are worthy of study include those to the Revd. A.O. Beattie and the Revd. G.M. Middleton, as well as that for John McIntyre in Cathcart Old Parish Cemetery.
Thomson was a visionary who introduced into our vocabulary some of the essential elements of sustainable housing. This argument hinges on an unrealized design Thomson prepared in 1868 for the Glasgow City Improvement Trust, an agency of the Town Council given the task of redeveloping a large area of slum housing centred on the medieval Old Town. The Trust invited Thomson and five other prominent architects to propose designs for the reconstruction of various parcels of land along the spine of Glasgow's High Street. Thomson suggested that closely spaced parallel tenements be built within the central courtyard, the ends of which will be open to facilitate ventilation. He also proposed that alternate streets be glazed for better warmth and safety for the residents. Although Thomson's ideas failed to catch on at the time, new research and CAD techniques have helped show how revolutionary was his proposal for improved workers' housing.
Writings
Thomson's published writings include the Haldane lectures on the history of architecture (1874) and the Inquiry as to the Appropriateness of the Gothic Style for the Proposed building for the University of Glasgow (1866) which attempted to refute Ruskin and Pugin’s claims for the superiority of Gothic.
Family
On 21 September 1847, Thomson married Jane Nicholson, granddaughter of the architect Peter Nicholson, in a double wedding ceremony with her sister, Jessie, who married John Baird II. They had twelve children in total and would later lose five of them in an epidemic. Thomson died on 22 March 1875 at his home in Moray Place in Strathbungo, Glasgow, fittingly in one of his own creations. The architect was buried in the lair adjacent to that in which his five deceased children were laid to rest, in Gorbals Southern Necropolis, on 26 March 1875, and he was joined there by his widow, Jane, in 1889.
One brother, George Thomson (1819–1878), became a baptist missionary in Limbe, Cameroon (then known as "Victoria"), where he combined his religious activities with a passion for botany. An epiphytic orchid of the Pachystoma genus was named Pachystoma thomsonianum in his honour.
His nephew, Rev. William Cooper Thomson (fl. 1820–1880s) was a missionary in Nigeria, after whom the bleeding-heart vine Clerodendrum thomsoniae was named.
Legacy
The Glasgow Institute of Architects set up The Alexander Thomson Memorial immediately following his death. A marble bust of the architect by John Mossman was presented to the Corporation Galleries, Sauchiehall Street, and is now displayed in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The Alexander Thomson Travelling Studentship, of which the second winner was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, was established in his honor, "for the purpose of providing a travelling studentship for the furtherance of the study of ancient classic architecture, with special reference to the principles illustrated in Mr. Thomson’s works".
Thomson was the preeminent architect of his era in Glasgow, yet until recently, his buildings and his reputation have been largely neglected in the city graced by his works.
Holmwood House is generally considered to be Thomson's finest and most original residential subject. Under the ownership of the National Trust for Scotland, Holmwood has been restored to its original condition and opened to the general public. During the renovation, nineteen panels of a classical frieze depicting scenes from Homer's Iliad were discovered under layers of paint and wallpaper, rendering Thomson's nickname all the more apt.
In 1999, a retrospective entitled Alexander Thomson: The Unknown Genius was held at the The Lighthouse, reminding Glaswegians of the need to preserve the remaining examples of this unique architect's contribution to their city.
The British emigre architect George Ashdown Audsley closely followed Thomson's ornamentation for several of his secular buildings. The most notable surviving example is his Bowling Green Offices (completed 1896) in New York City. The highly carved granite base of this tall office building is in the Thomson manner with brick Chicago School style floors above.
By the respected Alexander Thomson, 1858. Greek classical. 3-storey commercial building with modern shops at ground floor, 8 main bays. 1st floor recessed T-pane glazing in corniced palisade with Greek key incised necking and rosettes in the cornice; plain entablature. Geometric incised frieze below 2nd floor anta palisade with rosettes. Main entablature with anthemion and palmette incised frieze; eaves cornice; blocking course, raised to parapet in outer bays.
This steep stone staircase is the famous Sixty Steps, by a great, curved retaining wall, connecting Kelvinside Terrace to the streets on the slopes above. Kelvinside Terrace, as the name implies, runs right alongside the River Kelvin, and the Steps are part of what remains of the original Queen Margaret Bridge structure over the river in Glasgow's West End, near the Botanic Gardens.
Directly in front of this early 1870s structure is where the bridge itself stood, replaced in the 20th century by the current bridge on busy Queen Margaret Drive, which runs right past the Botanics and down towards the university, of the original bridge all that remains are the end pieces of the bridge and this substantial, towering retaining wall and the Steps, all by the great Alexander "Greek" Thomson, the architect responsible for a number of the exceptionally fine Victorian buildings in Glasgow.
An excellent example of the complete and utter failure of facade replacement on modernist buildings. The concrete facing of Heron House as completed complemented the St Vincent Street Church, even if the scale did not (although I would argue the composition was rather clever). Now, both scale and material jar appallingly with the church. It's just awful.
The Grecian Chambers were designed by Alexander Thomson in 1867. The building is a Grade A Listed Building.
St Vincent Street-Milton Free Church, une église (à gauche sur la photo) conçue par l'architecte Alexander Thomson, appelé le Grec (1817-1875)
Alexandre Thomson a rejeté le renouveau de l'architecture gothique qui caractérisait de nombreux bâtiments à l'époque victorienne, au profit d'un retour à l'architecture grecque ancienne.
Le résultat est aujourd'hui particulièrement étrange et fait partie du charme éclectique de Glasgow.
One of Alexander 'Greek' Thomson's churches. Built in 1856.
A Grade A listed building, despite being mostly destroyed by fire in 1965.
Behind the facade there is a rather pleasant little garden
These slides were used in a lecture presented by JR James at the Department of Town and Regional Planning at The University of Sheffield between 1967 and 1978.
An excellent example of the complete and utter failure of facade replacement on modernist buildings. The concrete facing of Heron House as completed complemented the St Vincent Street Church, even if the scale did not (although I would argue the composition was rather clever). Now, both scale and material jar appallingly with the church. It's just awful.
'Sentence
Thomson 7 years penal servitude.
Forrest fifteen months imprisonment.'
Sp Coll Mu Add. f50-51
The Grecian Chambers were designed by Alexander Thomson in 1867. The building is a Grade A Listed Building.
By Alexander Thomson (A and G Thomson) 1857-59. Greek Revival individually interpreted. Rectangular temple plan with lower aisles raised on full-storey podium containing halls and other apartments with graduated plinth; tall rectangular tower at NE, linked to lower section and breaking into main body of church behind temple front. Ashlar. Hexastyle fluted Ionic temple fronts to N and S.
Unusual internal arrangement - the floor of the church is contained in the upper part of the substructure, only the gallery level and above are within the "temple". Galleries and clerestory supported on stylised Greek cast-iron columns; end walls with pilaster decoration; pulpit set in panelling; coffered ceiling decorations.
Built as United Presbyterian Church. It is the only complete church by Alexander Thomson to survive.
St Vincent Street Free Church, Glasgow, by Alexander Thomson 1857-9 (built for the United Presbyterians)
The Sixty Steps were designed by Alexander "Greek" Thomson in the 1870s to provide access to the origianl Queen Margaret Bridge, connecting Kelvinside Terrace and Garriochmill Road. Unfortunately the Queen Margaret Bridge no longer stands and all that remains are the brick foundations on either side of the River Kelvin.
St. Vincent Street Church is a Presbyterian church on St. Vincent Street in Glasgow, Scotland. It was designed by Alexander Thomson and built in 1859 for the former United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.The church building is owned by Glasgow City Council, but is currently used by a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland. It is a Category A listed building.
The Grecian Chambers were designed by Alexander Thomson in 1867. The building is a Grade A Listed Building.
St. Vincent Street Church is a Presbyterian church on St. Vincent Street in Glasgow, Scotland. It was designed by Alexander Thomson and built in 1859 for the former United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.The church building is owned by Glasgow City Council, but is currently used by a congregation of the Free Church of Scotland. It is a Category A listed building.
Architect Alexander Thomson.
I like the contrast with the more recent Gorbals buildings and the abandoned wheel cover.
Egyptian Halls, 84-100 Union Street, Glasgow. Warehouse designed by Alexander Thomson in 1870 for James Robertson. Built 1871-3.
Historic Scotland list description: hsewsf.sedsh.gov.uk/hslive/hsstart?P_HBNUM=33208
RCAHMS historical info: canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/126676/details/glasgow+84+1...
Dictionary of Scottish Architects entry: www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/building_full.php?id=214202
Owners/developers' website: www.egyptianhalls.co.uk/