Why is one of the most historic districts of Glasgow being so badly neglected?

Later, after starting an apprenticeship as a chartered accountant with Reid & Mair at 200 St Vincent Street, Graeme got to know the Blythswood area of the city even better. On Friday evenings, after his classes had ended at the CA Institute further up the street, hundreds of apprentices (mainly men) would flood out of the building and meet their girlfriends at the door and head off for a bite to eat and a drink. Graeme’s favourite place to go with Jean was the fashionable restaurant and cocktail bar Danny Brown’s on St Vincent Street. It was a bustling, buzzy part of town and he loved it.

But look at it now. Some 50 years later, Graeme is back in the Blythswood area to talk about his memories of the past – and his hopes for the future – and he can’t help being a little depressed by what he sees. This part of the city, he says – from the west end of Buchanan Street all the way up to Garnethill – was Glasgow’s New Town and yet, in his view, much of it is being neglected now. “It’s been left to waste away,” he says.

Blythswood in the early 1960s (Image: Newsquest/Harry Moyes)

Part of Graeme’s efforts to change the fate of the area is a new book, Glasgow’s Blythswood, which explores the history of the area but also the possibilities for its future. It’s hard to believe now but there was a time, in the 18th century, when this part of the city was pretty much un-used barren land between the old town and the more fertile agricultural lands along the River Kelvin. “It was totally barren and not cultivated at all,” he says. “It was a big empty space.”

And then, from around 1800 onwards, the empty land and hills west of the brand new Buchanan Street were opened up and new streets were laid out on the slopes rising up and over Blythswood Hill. The first new houses appeared in Sauchiehall Street followed by St Vincent Street, then West George Street. This was, in the publicity of the time, the city’s “New Town of Blythswood”.

When he thinks about the history of this place, Graeme is always keen to talk about William Harley, who more than any other was responsible for creating the idea of the New Town. Born to a tenant farmer in Perthshire and orphaned at a young age, Harley was brought up by his grandmother, and then worked in his uncle’s linen works in Perth before moving to Glasgow to seek his fortune.

Having purchased a house called Sauchy Hall and its estate in 1802, he began to collect water from springs in the grounds and sell it to the public. On what later became Bath Street, he also opened the city’s first public baths which paved the way for steamies and swimming pools across Glasgow. He even kept a herd of cows and pioneered the principles of hygiene which dairies still use today. And it’s a lovely idea isn’t it: cows happily grazing away on what is now Sauchiehall Street.

As far as Smith is concerned, it’s William Harley who deserves most of the credit for creating what we now know as Blythswood. It was Harley, with his wife Jane, who laid out the area in splendid style and crowned it with the elegant Blythswood Square. The prosperity it created brought new townhouses, churches, schools, shops, offices, clubs, hotels, artists’ studios, theatres and tenements. Truly, it was a New Town.

In its Victorian heyday, Blythswood Hill was also the most fashionable place for Glaswegians to be. In 1882, eight women students of the Glasgow School of Art established the Lady Artists’ Club in the Square which was the first residential club in Britain and continued until the early 1970s. On the eastern side of the square, the Royal Scottish Automobile Club also established their HQ and the square was often the starting point for glamorous car rallies.

A car rally leaves the square

Of course, one house on the square also became notorious rather than famous when the 21-year-old socialite who lived there, Madeleine Smith, was accused of killing her lover with arsenic. It was the great scandal of the day and at her trial for murder in 1857, all the details of Madeleine’s affair with Pierre Emile L'Angelier, a packing clerk in a warehouse in Bothwell Street, emerged. In the end, the verdict was Not Proven.

Smith’s family lived on Blythswood Square probably because it was one of the most desirable addresses in Glasgow and in many ways the view Madeleine would have seen from her window is pretty much the same as it was 150 years ago. For many years, the gardens at the centre of the square, which are owned by a committee made up of proprietors round the square, were open to the public but they have been locked since 2011 after the Occupy movement set up camp there.

For Smith, the closure of the gardens is a great pity especially since, in his view, it could be one of the gems to attract the public. He’s also disturbed by what he sees as the lack of attention that the council has given to the area. “It started in the 1980s after the big stores on Sauchiehall street closed down,” he says, “and it’s out of sight and mind as far as the city council is concerned because they’ve changed their focus to the east of George Square in Merchant City rather than the west up the hill.”

The answer, says Smith, is to bring the same kind of attention that Merchant City has enjoyed to Blythswood. “You need to focus on the area with the same verve and courage as we did with the development of Merchant City,” he says. “The Merchant City was largely warehousing and manufacturing and markets and so forth. It was becoming very empty – people had moved away and businesses had moved out. In Blythswood, there are still businesses but there’s no cohesion – it’s a conservation area and on that score alone should have lots more money put into it. The council needs to start with a plan but there’s been no great leadership there at all for many years.”

Smith – who in his career was involved in the planning and building of new towns such as East Kilbride – also believes that the great visual impact of Blythswood has been diluted by demolition and disaster – notably the fire that destroyed the Glasgow School of Art and the O2 building – and that one way to recapture it would be to plan and build a new public square on the site of the destroyed cinema, latterly a music venue, on Sauchiehall Street.

“You need to have things to do and go to,” he says. “That’s why there needs to be a Sauchiehall Street square, an arts square which on one side would have the McLennan Galleries and would also back on to the rear of the Art School which is more attractive than the fronts of many other buildings today anyway. Mackintosh is world famous and yet there is absolute, total silence.”

Summer in the 1960s (Image: Newsquest)

Smith believes any plans for the new square could be financed partly by selling the mothballed McLennan Galleries to the National Galleries of Scotland. “They could run it and market it as their place in the west,” he says, “letting Glasgow and the west of Scotland see more of the nation’s collections and exhibitions on a continual basis, and in the very heart of Sauchiehall Street, equal to Edinburgh.”

Smith – who has won support from many of the businesses in the area – has plenty of other ideas for the regeneration and recovery of Blythswood, including establishing a Blythswood Improvement District akin to the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District in New York City, which was pioneered by Mayor Giuliani.

The regeneration of Blythswood, says Smith, would also be about defining the area much more clearly in the way that Merchant City has been. “Blythswood is an area of national and international importance,” he says, “so the council should introduce streetscapes to the same standard as seen in the Merchant City.” This would entail getting rid of what he calls the broken-toffee jigsaw and tar-infill pavements on what should be elegant historical streets. Blythswood became a conservation area in the 1970s, he says, but the pavements are way below that standard.

Smith has also suggested defining the area with standard lamps along its streets and on its important junctions. “This could be similar, for example, to the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego, when its New Town area was declining. All the iron standards should be crafted in Scotland. And have a similar design to the Edwardian globe standards used at doorways to a number of the prestigious buildings, particularly those on St Vincent Street and Blythswood Square.”

Smith does see some signs of hope in the area and to be fair to him he is not the kind of architectural enthusiast who believes that the past was better and it should be preserved as it was. He singles out the site of the old Strathclyde Police Headquarters on Holland Street which has been razed for housing and thinks the plan for some 300 flats in its place, with courtyard and rooftop gardens, is a positive step. According to the developers, the courtyard garden is a specific nod to William Harley.

The fact that developments such as the flats in Holland Street will bring more new residents into Blythswood is also a positive, says Smith, as is several plans for hotels in the area. But he compares the New Town of Glasgow to the New Town of Edinburgh; the latter is celebrated round the world and is a desirable place to be and to live in; Glasgow’s New Town by contrast, he says, is neglected even though it should be just as celebrated.

He singles out St Vincent Street in particular which contains the area’s oldest surviving villa (from 1819) but also, in Smith’s view, it is the street which has more interesting and exciting buildings than any other in Glasgow.

For Smith, like probably every Glaswegian, there’s also, of course, a strong personal story at work. He remembers working at the M&S warehouse back in the 1960s, but he also remembers arranging to meet his girlfriend Jean on St Vincent Street after work. Most nights, they would go to Danny Brown’s at Number 79, which he says was one of the top cocktail bars in the city at the time; elegant, friendly, exciting.

It's long gone now of course. By the end of the 1970s, Blythswood was changing and Danny Brown’s closed its doors. For Smith, it was the beginning of a metamorphosis – a decline – in a part of the city that was also part of his life story. It is not too late to save it and protect it, he says. But it will need money. And commitment. And a plan. And passion.

Glasgow’s Blythswood by Graeme Smith is available at www.blythswoodsmith.co.uk. The book is also on sale at Mackintosh at the Willow and Hyndland Bookshop.

Glasgow’s neglected gem – a plan to save it

The “magnificent New Town of Blythswood” began to emerge in the early 19th century with Georgian townhouses and Victorian palazzos lining the slopes of the hill and was largely completed by the 1850s. However, in recent years, the decline of Sauchiehall Street, disasters such as the Art School fire, and an exodus of residents and businesses, has left the area in need or regeneration and recovery. Graeme Smith, author of new book Glasgow’s Blythswood, has some ideas.

REBUILD GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART

Graeme Smith says the lack of progress on the rebuild is shocking and public progress reports should be delivered every three months, by an authorised, independent source other than GSA.

SELL McLELLAN GALLERIES

With the proceeds, Glasgow City Council could buy the adjacent derelict site of destroyed picture houses and make it a major public square, in Art Nouveau Style. This would allow the rear of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece to be seen by the world.

ESTABLISH A BLYTHSWOOD BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT

Business improvement districts have been used in New York to regenerate parts of the city. Businesses in the area would pay a levy which be used for improvements.

PROMOTE ‘BLYTHSWOOD’ IN THE SAME WAY AS ‘MERCHANT CITY’

Smith believes one of Glasgow’s gems is being allowed to waste away and part of the solution is to define the area visually in the way that Merchant City is. One model that could be used, says Smith, is the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego

Glasgow’s Blythswood by Graeme Smith is available at www.blythswoodsmith.co.uk. The book is also on sale at Mackintosh at the Willow, and Hyndland Bookshop.