Architecture
The genius of Alexander Thomson
Gavin Stamp seeks to revive the reputation of a great Glaswegian architect
Idate the decline of Glasgow to a moment decades before the collapse of the Second City's industrial base. Surely it began in the 1860s when the dons at the university decided to sell their ancient site to a railway company for a goods yard and then asked a fashionable London architect — Gilbert Scott — to design the new build- ings on more salubrious Gilmourhill. This was a betrayal of Glasgow's own vital archi- tectural culture, for the city has produced more than its fair share of the greatest British architects: Mackintosh, Burnet, Salmon, Thomson. And nobody could have been more angry about this decision than Alexander Thomson, for not only was a Glasgow architect denied the job but the style chosen — Gothic — he thought for- eign, irrational, barbaric. The Classical tradition in Glasgow has been almost continuous and remarkably vigorous — and never more so than when developed by 'Greek' Thomson. In his hands, the Greek Revival was taken fur- ther, and lasted longer, than anywhere else in Britain. His work remains of peculiar interest today for he showed how an archi- tecture rooted in tradition — an eclectic fusion of Greek, Egyptian and other exotic elements — could cope with new condi- tions. Like the great Prussian Neo- Classicist Schinkel, Thomson addressed the age of steam and iron and designed office blocks, warehouses, tenements and terraces of quite extraordinary richness and origi- nality. More than any other architect, he enhanced the image of Victorian Glasgow.
Along with Hawksmoor, Soane and Lutyens, Thomson seems to me to belong with that handful of British architects who said something genuinely new and inven- tive with the Classical language. Like Lutyens, he had the power to make inert masses of stone into something living and powerful; with him, a wall is not a slab but a dynamic mass of masonry, which seems to be controlled by the trabeated construc- tional system of the orders — cornices and pilasters — which occasionally burst through the skin into the open. This is as true of an ordinary pine door as it is of the massive cyclopean base of the St Vincent Street church. And above that base is an extraordinary integrated confection of Grecian porticoes and rippling masonry culminating in a steeple which, if anything, seems Indian in inspiration.
Yet Thomson, like Hawksmoor, never left the British Isles. Indeed, he spent most of his life in Glasgow. His architecture is based on imagination, not on direct experi- ence of precedent. He knew about Schinkel and other contemporary Classicists, but above all he was inspired with a vision of the Ancient World, of endless colonnades and huge terraces, of massive porticoes, and strange towers as depicted in the apoc- alyptic paintings of John Martin — we know this because Thomson said so in his lectures. It was an eclectic vision of the Sublime, of the Old Testament times, which appealed to his radical Scots Presbyterian conscience. But what is amaz- ing about Thomson is that he built this vision in hard, northern, commercial Glasgow. As Sir John Summerson put it to me, he took these apocalyptic forms and made them work — in prosaic modern buildings treated with richness and sophis- tication which still have the power to move and overawe the spectator.
When I first visited Glasgow 23 years ago, I wanted to see the works of both `That's what I call hair supremacy.' Thomson and Mackintosh. I was not disap- pointed with either, although I was dis- mayed to find the shell of the Caledonia Road church, one of what Henry-Russell Hitchcock considered were 'three of the finest Romantic Classical churches in the world', which had been burnt out by van- dals three years before. But worse was to come. Since I began working in Glasgow last year, I have been appalled to find how many of Thomson's tenements and office buildings have been destroyed in the last few decades and how many of his surviving buildings are in poor condition today. Thomson, of course, as the creator of so much of Victorian Glasgow, was a principal victim of the self-hatred fuelled by insane utopianism that overcame the city in the 1960s. But what today seems so reprehensi- ble — especially after Glasgow's proud revival and stint as European City of Culture — is that while Thomson is neglected, the cult of that other original genius that Glasgow has produced, C.R. Mackintosh, has reached the point of mania while being deplorably vulgarised by the tourist industry.
This was not always so, and Mackintosh was rescued from undeserved obscurity by the admirable Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society. So the answer seemed clear: when we succeeded in buying the great archi- tect's own house, I resolved to found the Alexander Thomson Society to redress the balance. This is to be launched at a public meeting in the spectacular interior of Thomson's St Vincent Street church — the only intact survivor of his three churches on his birthday, 9 April. I am happy to say that this idea has already attracted wide interest, for although Thomson was very much a Glasgow architect, he now seems a towering figure of international stature and certainly one of the most original figures in British architectural history.
The task is to convince Glasgow of Greek Thomson's greatness. This may be difficult, as he lacks both the commercial potential and the tragic, avant-garde glam- our of the now semi-mythical Mackintosh. For Thomson was a conventional, dutiful, church-going, bearded Victorian in a frock coat, happily married with lots of children; he was not tortured by feeling unappreciat- ed and misunderstood, nor haunted by a sense of failure; he did not drink too much, was much liked and respected by his con- temporaries, and stayed in Glasgow until his premature death in 1875. Yet within that conventional Scots professional seethed one of the most creative architec- tural imaginations of the 19th century.
Spectator readers, I am sure, would not dream of judging any artist by his external appearance but only by his achievement and what survives of Thomson's work is deeply precious. So please support the Alexander Thomson Society.
Enquiries to 1 Moray Place, Strathbungo, Glasgow G41 2AQ.
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