Glasgow Grid City
As above, so below. It's all in the planning (Part 1)
Glasgow, an ancient city with a rich international trading history, is unusual in the United Kingdom. Past the original heart of the city around the High Street, Trongate (a weighgate used to levy duty on goods) and the Cathedral, Glasgow is one of the few examples of a grid planned city/town. A pattern of construction used in the Greco Roman era, the oldest example we have is the medieval grid of Bury St Edmund’s settlement. New Town, at the heart of Edinburgh, was also built on a grid between 1767 - 1850. There are more modern examples in Birkenhead and Milton Keynes, the later being of specific interest for its sheer size, spacious layout with subterranean levels and location.
Glasgow’s Merchant City, an area of large palazzos in neo Baroque and Palladian style, together with more modern Art Deco architecture, was the first area to be constructed on a grid pattern, beginning circa 1740’s. Why is this important? As to create an approximately square mile grid of substantial buildings, would not take just money but great organisation and collaboration between merchants, architects, public appointees, and noblemen alike. The tight grid structure allows us to reference significant points and events above ground and structures below. Is it any surprise that members of the Merchant’s House of Glasgow, understood to be freemasons, opened the Glasgow Necropolis in 1833, and many of those interred there have their monuments and gravestones decorated with the tools of masonry.
The map above from 1878, is preceded by a map from 1844 by Robert Parry, of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, indicated areas of fever epidemic starting in 1843. By 1878 rail had been brought in to the centre of the city. Much of the track is covered over now on approach, but in the map above you can see small sections of faded line indicating tunneling was used to reach their destination where large sections remain exposed.
The Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the original, was chartered in 1791 and opened for use in 1793. It was positioned on the High Street, backing on to the Cathedral Lawns, past which to the east was the Necropolis.
Looking at the modern day map of Glasgow, energetic lines from the gardens of The People’s Palace, built in Glasgow Green between 1894 -1898 as a cultural centre for the less wealthy inhabitants of the City, are striking for their symmetry, like sun rays, but also for their intersection of key points in the City, both old and new.
To begin with the older landmarks, the western most line intersects with the Kelingrove Art Museum and Gallery, designed by Sir John W. Simpson and E.J. Milner Allen, opened in 1901, for the Glasgow International Exhibition. As the line departs the Palace, it travels through the Mclennan Arch, the entrance to the Glasgow Green from Saltmarket. It does not go unnoticed that this was the location for public hangings.
The next line dissects George’s Square and Glasgow Queen Street Station. The line running just east of north dissects The Glasgow Royal Infirmary, a poignant juxtaposition of recreation and infirmity, of death to the west by the gallows, or north through the hospital to the Necropolis graveyard to the east. The final line to the east runs through Gallowgate, and runs parallel to the Dumfries and Galloway fault line at a distance of approximately 45 miles.
Continued in Part 2…