Beyond repair or a city's saving grace?

The historian Gavin Stamp, chairman of the 500-member Alexander Thomson Society, branded Glasgow City Council philistines when news of the demolition order broke. "Something should have happened to protect this building’s future years ago. The council pay lip-service to conservation, but at the end of the day they just don’t care."

That isn’t true according to Glasgow City Council’s Jim MacDonald. He says the building had deteriorated to the point where public safety concerns outweighed any question of conservation. "We did everything in our powers but there was ultimately no alternative to demolition," says MacDonald. "When part of the structure unexpectedly collapsed last weekend there was only one solution. It’s just one of those things - a tragic saga with an unfortunate, unhappy end."

The fate of the warehouse has sparked a debate in architectural circles about the point at which, when important buildings fall into disrepair, it becomes time to let go. The last remaining Watson Street Warehouse, in the city’s Trongate, was widely regarded as one of Thomson’s great commercial designs, representing an important example of the architect’s late work.

‘Scotland’s other architect’, though less publicly well-known than Charles Rennie Mackintosh, is nonetheless synonymous with Glasgow’s streetscape. His Queens Park Church was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs in 1943, but his remaining two churches at Caledonia Road and St Vincent Street, both notable for their Egyptian and Hindu motifs, are still considered to be decades ahead of their time. Of the two remaining churches one is a burnt-out ruin and the other needs comprehensive repairs. This would be less worrying were it not for the fact that important work like Thomson’s Bell St warehouse, his tenements in Otago Street and Queens Park Terrace (bulldozed in 1981) have already gone.

Stamp says: "The precedents have been set already. In all three cases demolition rather than restoration was the favoured course of action."

Thomson’s face may have adorned Clydesdale Bank fivers, but, says, Gavin Stamp, there has never been any great love for his oeuvre among Glasgow’s city fathers. In his comprehensive study Alexander Greek Thomson, Stamp, a historian based at Glasgow School of Art, claims that when Glasgow entertained The Royal Incorporation of British Architects’ annual conference in 1964 Glasgow planning convener Richard McCutcheon publicly announced that the Corporation should decide to maintain either the Caldedonia Road or St Vincent Street Church - but not both.

He said: "By the following year, the Corporation had effectively torched the Caledonia Road Church themselves when they did nothing to keep the vandals out."

In total there are over 47,000 listed buildings in Scotland ranging from Category A national treasures like Edinburgh Castle to Category B structures of regional importance and locally notable Category C buildings. Both interiors and exteriors are subject to planning restrictions and protective legislation. The key to listing lies with perceived architectural and historical merit.

In the 1950s Scotland’s Catholic hierarchy embarked upon an ambitious programme of church building in an attempt to reconcile faith with modernity. In the west of Scotland, this resulted in a period of patronage that meant Scotland boasts some of the finest modern churches in Britain. The Glasgow firm Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, run by Jack Coia, designed many of them. By the 1980s, however, financial imperatives led to the closure and demolition of much of Glasgow’s cutting-edge church estate.

The wilful neglect of GK&C’s St Peter’s seminary at Cardross led Professor Frank Walker to write: "This is a building of national significance, astonishing in its design and its degradation. Nothing prepares one for the shock of the new, grown prematurely old."

St Bernard’s in Drumchapel and the Immaculate Conception church, Maryhill, are merely the most notable of GK&C churches demolished with unseemly haste in an effort to cut costs. The fact that the St Patrick’s Day lightning strike on St Bernard’s deliberately took place just a few days before it was scheduled to be listed by Historic Scotland was a stark reminder of just how much the church’s priorities had changed. Once these decisions are taken their effects cannot be reversed.

Paradoxically, thanks to Historic Scotland’s 30-year listings guideline, newer structures such as certain groundbreaking churches by Gillespie, Kidd and Coia or significant interiors like Bar 10 (designed by Ben Kelly, also responsible for Manchester’s famous Hacienda nightclub) remain unlisted. They could otherwise benefit from protection in ways that Thomson’s derelict warehouse never could.

One solution could be the abolition of Historic Scotland’s 30-year rule so that buildings could be protected purely on architectural merit. If that were to happen, Kelly’s Bar 10 in Mitchell Lane would be an obvious listing candidate. Bar 10 is revered among designers as Britain’s first style bar and a potent symbol of contemporary Glasgow. With The Hacienda demolished in the late 1990s, Bar 10 is the greatest existing example of Kelly’s design work and he, for one, is relieved that the bar has finally found a sympathetic owner dedicated to maintaining its strikingly original features.

In Jim MacDonald’s Surplus buildings register (established in 1981), at least Glasgow City Council can claim a proactive response to urban blight that is the first of its kind anywhere in Britain. "The idea is to draw the attention of potential purchasers and planners to the condition of neglected buildings. We want to stimulate a public response by publicising buildings that are at risk and ultimately secure their future."

Along with other bodies like Historic Scotland it aims to find new owners for buildings, marry proposals to partners, put funding packages in place and in some cases allocate funds for restoration.

Projects currently featured on the surplus buildings register - and therefore under threat- include the former Leverndale Hospital and Thomson’s Caledonia Road Church as well as Provan’s Lordship - Glasgow’s so-called oldest house - that dates from 1460.

MacDonald says: "Absentee landlords and commercially unattractive properties complicate our task but I’d say that ours is a policy of limited powers used well and many of our successes, especially in outlying areas like Easterhouse and Castlemilk go unreported."

MacDonald, for one, can count on the support of Alan Dunlop over the Watson Street warehouse. The architect behind Glasgow landmarks like Spectrum House and the newly completed Radisson hotel says: "I am dead against the principle of listing buildings with very few exceptions. Like everything else buildings have a natural lifespan and once they are no longer fit to serve their purpose it’s right that they’re demolished.

"We have to ask: what use is a building without a soul? It’s a monument rather than a useful structure. In this case it was dangerous and the council were correct to prioritise public safety."

Dunlop feels equally strongly about the ruined Caledonian Road church. "The constantly evolving nature of cities is what gives them their dynamism and in urban environments, particularly, we should not be preserving our architecture in aspic. It’s sad to lose buildings of note but sometimes circumstances conspire to make it inevitable. When a building is demolished the only fitting response is to ensure that a suitably top class replacement is erected in its place."