ARTS
Architecture
David Hamilton, Architect, 1768-1843: Father of the Profession (Stirling's Library, Glasgow, till 26 Novem- ber; Matthew Gallery, University of Edin- burgh, 30 November-17 December)
Glasgow's fair Exchange
Gavin Stamp Hamiltons, like Pitts, come in waves. There was the Edinburgh Neo-Classicist Thomas Hamilton, who was responsible for the magnificent High School on Calton Hill — a Greek Doric pile all set to be Scot- land's Parliament. And there was David Hamilton (no relation), an older man who was Glasgow-born and Glasgow-based and who, more than any other architect, creat- ed the character of the Early Victorian city. The son of a stonemason, he was described as the 'father of architecture in the west of Scotland' when he died in 1843. His was the best office to work in and his daughter married the architect James Smith. Hamil- ton was therefore the grandfather of the notorious Madeleine, Scotland's most cele- brated (`not proven') murderess, but he was long dead when that scandal broke.
David Hamilton may not be well-known today, but that is a consequence both of Glasgow's' reckless prodigality with its finest buildings and of the parochialism of Edinburgh and England. Hamilton was a Glasgow architect but, as Ranald MacInnes puts it, 'Glasgow was big enough and self- contained enough both to produce and to employ the greatest architects of the day, and this continued through the glo- rious Thomson era into that of the great J.J. Burnet and of Charles Rennie Mackintosh'. Quite so.
Hamilton seems to have worked for Robert Adam as a young man, and his early houses are Adamesque. Later he showed he was equally adept at the Greek, the Italianate, the Gothic and even that most repulsive of historic styles, the Neo-Norman. He designed villas, houses, churches, public buildings and, not least, a palace. And here is a sad story. Hamilton was largely responsible for the final appearance of the huge and magnificent Hamil- ton Palace, principal seat of the Dukes of Hamilton (no relation), whose cavalier demolition after the Great War remains one of Scot- land's greatest cultural tragedies and scandals. In David Walker's words, 'if David Hamilton is not thought of in the same breath as the greatest of his Edinburgh con- temporaries, that is in part due to a cruel accident of fate: the destruc- tion of Hamilton Palace which would have challenged Chatsworth in popularity had it and its collections sur- vived intact'.
My quotes come from the illustrated book of short essays edited by Aonghus MacKechnie which accompanies the small exhibition organised to mark the 150th anniversary of Hamilton's death (£3.30; other essays by Linda Fryer, Diane Watters and Ian Gow). The first location of the exhibition is highly appropriate: the build- ing originally designed by Hamilton in 1827 Stirling 's Library — Glasgow's future Museum of Modern Art?
as a public meeting-place for the city's businessmen. An ingenious recasing and enlargement of a fine mansion of 1780, Hamilton made this the climax of the first great expansion of Glasgow west of the mediaeval High Street, for, in the new grid- plan of streets, its magnificent Corinthian portico with a cupola above closes the long vista down Ingram Street.
Hamilton, along with the Edinburgh architect Archibald Elliott, was therefore responsible for the most unified and ele- gantly planned part of Glasgow, for his building fills a square — Exchange Place — lined on three sides by elegant stone Classi- cal architecture with two symmetrical arch- ways to passages leading through to Buchanan Street (one of which boasts Rog- ano's, the celebrated Art Deco fish restau- rant). So Stirling's Library, as Hamilton's building is generally known, was originally the Royal Exchange. But soon it will have a new name: the Museum of Modern Art.
Edinburgh has a Museum of Modern Art, of course, in a handsome Greek Done building by William Burn, so, in these heady times of cultural politics, Glasgow must have one too. But whereas Edin- burgh's MoMA is way out of town, Glas- gow's will be slap bang in the heart of the city. And if Glasgow also succeeds in acquiring the proposed National Gallery of Scottish Art and installing it in the old Sheriff Court just along Ingram Street, the city will have two new museums: ones which even Edinburgh folk might visit, as they will be only a short walk from Queen Street Sta- tion.
I must confess I was alarmed when I first learned of Julian Spalding's plans for the Exchange, for I feared that Hamilton's richly modelled hall, a forest of Corinthi- an columns, would be disfigured by partitions, hessian and white emul- sion paint. But no: two-dimension- al art works are to go in the largelY unused spaces above and below, while the hall itself, once the haunt of Glasgow's merchants, will be stripped of its 1950s shelving and restored as an impressive display space for sculpture. A further
worry is the proposal to shift Maio- chetti's equestrian bronze and its tall pedestal from their axial post-
. tion in front of the portico, for I would rather have the great Duke of Wellington closing the vista down Ingram Street than, say, some Irn Bru girders by AnthonY Caro. Moving the Iron Duke seems to me a great pity, but it will be good to have Hamilton's Exchange restored to civilise the avant-garde.
Perhaps, when the Museum of Modern Art opens its doors in 1996, the name of David Hamilton will become better known: it deserves to be.
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