MODERN architecture is rubbish. Everybody knows it, but the profession still insists on annoying us with it, adopting a superior attitude lathered in cruelty, rather like the joy lawyers take in getting sadistic criminals off on spelling mistakes in the charge sheet. I’ve warned you about the professions before: they are the worst of us.

But, in Alexander “Greek” Thomson, architecture produced one of the best of us, and that mainly because his designs were steeped in the past. Nicknamed “Greek” for his love of kebabs, he’s been hailed as one of the two “greatest architects of the western world” produced by Glasgow, the other being Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

His varies output included villas, terraces, warehouses, tenement blocks, and three extraordinary churches in Glasgow, only one of which survives wholly intact. Fair to say several surviving buildings are the subject of ongoing rows about stewardship amid allegations of civic neglect.

Although Thomson’s idiosyncratic style included Egyptian and Levantine sources, as an architectural theorist he particularly championed classical Greek against Gothic in bestselling works such as the Inquiry as to the Appropriateness of the Gothic Style for the Proposed building for the University of Glasgow, Ken?, published in 1866.

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That said, leading architectural historian Sir John Summerson said: “There is something wildly ‘American’ about Thomson – a 'New World' attitude … a sort of primitivism, ultra-Tuscan.” Is there, aye?

Thomson was born on 9 April 1817 in the Stirlingshire village of Balfron. Son of John Thomson, bookkeeper in a spinning-mill, and Elizabeth Cooper, he was the ninth of 12 children, as in those days couples had no telly to watch.

As usual with geniuses, his father, who already had eight grown children from his previous marriage, died when Alexander was young. Knackered probably.

The family moved to the outskirts of Glasgow, where one of Alexander’s sisters, three of his brothers, and his mother died: all between 1828 and 1830. Thus life in the past: nothing but death. The remaining children moved in with the small family of their older brother, William, a teacher who lived in Hangingshaw, on Glasgow’s South Side. The children were home-schooled, and the boys went to work young.

Alexander started as a clerk in a lawyer’s office. One day, an architect client, Robert Foote, seeing wee Eck’s drawings, took him on as an apprentice.

When Foote put his feet up in 1836, Thomson became apprenticed to John Baird, later becoming his chief draughtsman. In 1847, Alex married Jane Nicholson, an architect’s granddaughter. On the same day, her sister Jessie married another architect, also called John Baird (in 19th century Glasgow, nearly everyone was called John Baird). In 1848, he and Thomson formed an architectural partnership called … Baird & Thomson.

In 1857, as “the rising architectural star of Glasgow”, Alexander entered into practice with his brother George for the most productive years of his life.

Already, at the age of 34, he’d designed his first and only castle, Craigrownie, a six-storey structure in Scots Baronial style, which stands at the tip of the Rosneath Peninsula in Cove, overlooking Loch Long.

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More typical of his output were the villas at Langside, Pollokshields, Helensburgh, the Clyde Estuary, and the Isle of Bute. Other important works still standing include Moray Place, Great Western Terrace, the Egyptian Halls, the Grosvenor Building, Buck's Head Building in Argyle Street, Grecian Chambers in Sauchiehall Street, Walmer and Millbrae Crescents, and his villa, Holmwood House, at Cathcart.

Holmwood, built for a paper mill owner in 1858, is considered Thomson's finest domestic design. For a time, an order of religious sisters owned it and built a primary school in the grounds . It’s now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, which describes it as “masterfully designed but surprisingly cosy”. During restoration work, a frieze depicting scenes from Homer’s rom-com, The Iliad, was discovered under layers of paint and wallpaper.

The Egyptian Halls on Union Street, one of Thomson’s last major projects and a category A listed building, is in disrepair amid a long, ongoing row between a developer and Glasgow City Council. In the past, it was even threatened with demolition.

Although bright, Thomson was also religious, and superstition informed his ecclesiastical work, with Solomon’s Temple supposedly a salient influence.

Caledonia Road Church, built in 1857, was his first kirk in the city. Badly damaged in an fire attack in 1965, today it’s a floodlit shell. In typical Greek neoclassical style, it sits trapped in a V-shaped junction of two roads. The accompanying tower had no Greek precedent and looks of much later Italianate influence. The two don’t go together. One, preferably the tower, should be demolished and replaced with a community centre or discotheque.

Joking. Another church, Queen’s Park United Presbyterian, was destroyed by a German bomb in 1943, much to the disappointment of Glasgow’s own fire-raisers. Sole survivor of Thomson’s three main city churches, St Vincent Street Church (1859) features a typical Thomson Greek temple placed next to another daft tower of no known architectural provenance. For a while after the arson attack on the Caledonia Road Church, the Glasgow Association of Spiritualists occupied St Vincent Street Church. Later, until 2021, it was used for orgies by the Free Church of Scotland, but has since served no higher purpose.

There was actually a fourth, lesser known kirk, Chalmers Memorial Free Church, in Ballater Street (then Govan Street). Constructed in 1859 to a more domestic design, after the death of religion it served several commercial purposes until damaged irreparably in 1971 by – all together now – a fire.

Thomson himself was damaged irreparably on 22 March 1875 when he died aged 57 at his home in Moray Place, one of his own creations. Only this week, that Herald newspaper reported plans to build 104 flats nearby, supposedly completing Thomson’s vision for the area. Interesting to see how that turns out.

Thomson left a widow and seven children. Shortly after his death, the Glasgow Institute of Architects set up The Alexander Thomson Memorial, while John Mossman completed a sculpture of his heid, which is displayed in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. An Alexander Thomson Society was Founded in 1991 by Professor Gavin Stamp.