20 Photographs Capture Street Scenes of Glasgow in 1976

These pictures were taken by Ed Sijmons and his partner Louise during their trip to Scotland in 1976. After spending some time in Edinburgh and other places, they decided to visit Glasgow.

“In Glasgow we stayed a few days, starting at a most terrible B&B, followed by a few days with a very nice woman, in the same street! The first address had 5 rooms at least and the second only one for B&B.” Described Sijmons. “It was a poor neighbourhood, and so looked the whole of Glasgow. We liked it, but not too much. But after all it was a real interesting city.”

More fascinating photographs could be found at Sijmons’ brilliant Flickr site.

Saltmarket with Railway bridge seen from St. Andrew’s Street

Near Saltmarket

Gallowgate

Clyde Street near Victoria Bridge

Clyde

See more»

Fascinating Black and White Photos of Glasgow in 1960

By the 1960s, Glasgow entered a lengthy period of relative economic decline and rapid de-industrialization as a result of the growth of industry in other countries such as Japan and West Germany, leading to high unemployment, urban decay, population decline, welfare dependency and poor health for the city's inhabitants. To rebuild and regenerate the city, a huge and radical program of efforts was started in the mid-1950s and lasted into the late 1970s.

Gorbals

One of the most densely populated cities in the world in the fifties, Glasgow's population was greatly reduced following comprehensive urban renewal projects in the 1960s, which resulted in clearances of poverty-stricken inner-city areas like the Gorbals relocation of people to designated new towns, such as Cumbernauld, Livingston, East Kilbride and peripheral suburbs, followed by successive boundary changes. 

On the evening of 28 March 1960, a fire started in a bonded warehouse in Cheapside Street, Anderston. The fire killed 14 fire service and 5 salvage corps personnel. The tragedy was Britain's worst peacetime fire services disaster.

These pictures of Glasgow in 1960 were taken by Allan Hailstone. For more photographs, visit his Flickr site.

Buchanan Street

St. Enoch Underground station

St. Enoch Underground station

Sauchiehall Street

See more»

Beautiful Vintage Kodachrome Photos of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1961

These fascinating images were taken by Charles Weever Cushman, an amateur photographer, during his trip to Scotland. Cushman arrived at Edinburgh on June 15, 1961 and later made way to Glasgow before jetting off.

Take a look at these 18 beautiful Kodachrome photographs of the two cities, and check out Cushman’s pictures of London in 1961:

Hope and Sauchiehall Streets, Glasgow

Hope and Sauchiehall Streets, Glasgow

Princes Street, West from St. Andrew, Edinburgh

Princes Street at St. Andrew, Edinburgh

Ferry ship River Clyde, Glasgow

See more»

The Immortals: Funny Photographs of a Group of Glasgow Students Having a Wonderful Weekend Together in the 1890s

Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s designs are so modern that it’s easy to forget that he was active at the turn of the 20th century. These group photos show Mackintosh and his fellow Glasgow School of Art friends, they came to be know as The Immortals.

The album is part of a collection of Jessie Keppie’s papers held at Glasgow School of Art’s Archives and Collections. Jessie Keppie’s brother, John Keppie also appears in the photographs. Keppie was a partner in Honeyman and Keppie, the architectural firm at which Mackintosh and Herbert McNair worked.

Back Row: Frances Macdonald. Middle row (L-R): Margaret Macdonald, Katherine Cameron, Janet Aitken, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, John Keppie. Front row (L-R): Herbert McNair, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

L-R: Frances Macdonald, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Katherine Cameron, Jessie Keppie, Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Frances MacDonald, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Katherine Cameron, Jessie Keppie and Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jessie Keppie, Agnes Raeburn, Janet Aitken, Katherine Cameron, Frances Macdonald, John Keppie (head and shoulders), Herbert McNair and Margaret Macdonald.

L-R: Katherine Cameron, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Janet Aitken, John Keppie, Agnes Raeburn, Jessie Keppie, Frances Macdonald, Herbert McNair, Margaret Macdonald.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert McNair, with Agnes Raeburn (?), and Jessie Keppie (?) and her sister (?).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) was a Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann.

From 1889 he worked as a draughtsman with Honeyman and Keppie, one of the leading architectural firms in Glasgow, where he remained for most of his architectural career. It was in the office of Honeyman and Keppie, at first as a draughtsman and from 1901 as a partner, that he designed his finest buildings for sites in and around Glasgow and much of his remarkable decorative work. He was extraordinarily creative but his career was uneventful, at least until it started to go wrong. For many years it was simply the story of his work.

While training as an architect in professional offices, Mackintosh also attended Glasgow School of Art between 1883 and 1894. He was one of a group of talented students there, mainly young middle-class women, who called themselves The Immortals. Herbert McNair, a colleague from Honeyman and Keppie, was also part of the group and in the mid-1890s he and Mackintosh worked closely with the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, painting complex watercolors and designing posters and works of decorative art. Symbolism, the arts and crafts movement, and art nouveau are all influences on this work.

Mackintosh’s experiences at Glasgow School of Art and the friendships he made there seemed to settle the shape of his career, with its interplay of architecture, decorative art, and painting, and he learned a good deal about himself and his abilities. Hard-working, voluble, kind, sometimes moody, and above all talented, he moved easily among these women despite his working-class origins.

In 1896 a competition was held for the design of a new building for Glasgow School of Art, to be built in the center of the city. Honeyman and Keppie won the competition with a design by Mackintosh, which laid out studios and workshops in two ranges of equal length on either side of a centerpiece with tall wings at either end. For lack of funds, only the eastern part and the centerpiece were built in 1897–9, with the rest left to be completed later.

Glasgow School of Art is an enigmatic and endearing building. It looks bare, as if the design had been generated only by its functions. But careful contemplation reveals Mackintosh’s purely compositional skill. He handled parts of the building, bays, wings, whole façades, with a freedom and expressiveness most architects achieve only in their handling of detail. The freedom of eclecticism, which amounted to little more than playfulness in the hands of Mackintosh’s British contemporaries, is here taken to an extreme, suggesting ambiguities and dislocations between the different parts, between inside and outside, between what seems to be the case and what is. The self-consciousness would be mannerist if Mackintosh had been working with rules that could be seen to be broken, but he was not. His design engages not with a stylistic code but with his own activity as a designer and with the perceptions of those who use and look at the building: it is a commentary upon itself.

(Images: Glasgow School of Art_ Archives & Collections)

33 Powerful Photos Document Poor Housing Conditions and the Lives of People Living in Slums in Glasgow in the Early 1970s

In 1968, Shelter employed photographer Nick Hedges to document the oppressive and abject living conditions being experienced in poor quality housing in the UK over a period of three years. Shelter commissioned the work in an effort to raise consciousness about the extent of unfit living conditions and to illustrate, in human terms, what the real cost of bad housing was.

“The thing about people living in slum housing is that there is no drama... it’s about the absolute wearing down of people’s morale in a quiet and undemonstrative way.” – Nick Hedges

Hedges took photos in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Newcastle, Glasgow and other locations. These amazing photographs were taken by Nick Hedges from his time in Scotland.

See more»

33 Amazing Photos Capture Street Scenes of Glasgow in 1982

Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, and the third most populous city in the United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Clyde in the country's West Central Lowlands and the fifth most visited city in the UK.

Scottish photographer Grisly Bob captured these amazing pics that show street scenes of Glasgow in 1982.

Eglinton Street

"The Right Half" bar

Advertising truck

Annie's Express

Annie's Express

See more»

Amazing Vintage Photographs Capture Street Scenes of Dennistoun, Glasgow in 1974

Dennistoun is a district of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated north of the River Clyde in the east end of the city. It is made up of a number of smaller districts - Milnbank to the north, 'The Drives' in the centre of the area and Bellgrove below Duke Street to the south. In a 2004 census the area had a population of roughly 10,530. Although predominantly tenemental, the Victorian villas and terraces to the west (towards the city centre) illustrate part of Alexander Dennistoun's original plan for the whole area.

Unable to attract the middle-class residents intended by its original developers, it established itself as a respectable working class area for families. After the Second World War, the area's Victorian tenements were refurbished and extended rather than replaced with high-rise modernist blocks as in other working-class districts such as neighbouring Calton and Parkhead, and this, coupled with proximity to the city centre and Caledonian and Strathclyde universities, has contributed to its gentrification in recent years; many of its residents are now students and young professionals.

The Roebank Street shops... no longer there. The newsagent shop in the centre was owned by Mrs. Fulton, mother of the famous Scots actor and comedian Ricky Fulton.

Looking up Coventry Drive towards Culloden Street.

From the gates of Alexandra Park on Alexandra Parade looking westwards towards Alexandra Park Street.

From Culloden Street looking down towards Low Coventry Drive and Harcourt Drive.

Harcourt Drive from Coventry Drive.

See more»

Glasgow Slum in the Late 1940s: 22 Harrowing Photographs Capture Everyday Life of Residents of the Gorbals in 1948

Up to 40,000 people lived in the notorious Glasgow slum of the Gorbals in the late 1940s. They live four, six, eight to a room, often 30 to a lavatory, 40 to a tap.

At first sight, of an early morning, the Gorbals looks like any other poor area. Its flat, wide streets are lined with flat-faced tenements. There is a pub on every corner and an undertaker’s (open day and night) in almost every other block.

It is not until you get inside the tenements that you realise the Gorbals is no ordinary poor place. It is, in fact, an area that provides a very special version of the slum problem. The tenement blocks in the Gorbals sprung up in the 1840s as people flocked to Glasgow to work in the city's factories.

Unable to keep up with the demand for housing, the tenements were built quickly and cheaply and were designed to pack as many people in as possible. But appalling conditions came with it and it was not unusual for houses to have no water facilities and for sewage to run through the streets.

In its beginnings, the problem was one of immigration. A century ago, thousands of poor labourers began to arrive in Glasgow. They came to work on the new-fangled railways and the docks of the Clyde. They came for higher wages, for fuller plates, for what they conceived to be a better way of life than was possible in starving Erin and the wasted Scottish Highlands.

Two children play with their doll as they pose for the camera

Two boys walking along a street in the run-down Gorbals

Child eat their breakfast in one of the overcrowded tenement flats, that would sometimes see up to 30 people have to share one toilet

Without many toys to play with, two young lads decide to play a game on a heap of rubbish

Children entertain themselves by playing in dirty puddle water in the slums

See more»

35 Impressive Color Photos That Capture Daily Life of Glasgow in the 1960s

Here is an amazing collection of color pictures from doveson2002 that captured daily life of Glasgow from the 1960s, most of them were taken in 1961.

Alex Munro (Butchers), possibly Westmuir Street, Glasgow, 1961

Boots store, junction of Jamaica Street and Argyle Street, Glasgow, 1961

Bowling Green, Kelvingrove Art Gallery & The University, Glasgow, 1961

Cathedral interior, Glasgow, 1961

Co-operative shop, possibly Westmuir Street, Glasgow, 1961

See more»

60 Striking Photographs Captured Everyday Life in Glasgow in 1980

In 1980, French photojournalist Raymond Depardon was commissioned by the Sunday Times to travel to Glasgow for a feature on Europe’s overlooked tourist destinations. He knew nothing about the city and couldn't speak English either.

“My English was very limited and to begin with,” he said. “I couldn’t understand the Glasgow accent at all. The little children on the streets did not mind a bit. They didn’t understand me but would take me by the hand and trail me around their landmarks. It’s thanks to them that I was able to capture the incredible images.”

Instead of capturing fashionable Hillhead or the impressive Victorian boulevards of the centre, Depardon was drawn to Govan, Maryhill, the Gorbals and Calton. The districts Depardon visited were the frontline of city’s post-war struggle with deindustrialisation and depopulation, where a legacy of slum clearance and high unemployment had left them bruised.

The photographer’s work detailed the harsh realities of life for some, but also found children playing happily in the streets, and widespread evidence of a community spirit undimmed by tough circumstances.

See more»