Miss Cranston's Lunch and Tea Rooms, Ingram Street

M179 Miss Cranston's Lunch and Tea Rooms, Ingram Street

Address: 205–217, Ingram Street, Glasgow G1 1DQ
Date: 1900–1; 1904–5; 1907–8; 1909–10; 1911; 1911–12
Client: Miss Cranston
Authorship: Authorship category 1 (Mackintosh) (Mackintosh)

Colour photograph of 205–217 Ingram Street, 2012

Mackintosh carried out six phases of work at Miss Cranston's Lunch and Tea Rooms on Ingram Street, between 1900 and 1912. This was the third Cranston tea room Mackintosh worked on. At Buchanan Street and Argyle Street, he had designed wall decoration, furniture and fittings. Here he had responsibility, for the first time, for structural alterations and reorganising the layout, as well as for designing decorative schemes and furniture.

Authorship: Mackintosh twice mentioned the work at Ingram Street in letters to Hermann Muthesius in January and July 1900. Photographs of the completed work were published in the Studio in 1903 under Mackintosh's name. 1

Alternative names: Cooper's Tea Rooms, Mackintosh Discount Store.

Alternative addresses:
205–217 Ingram Street
94–104 Miller Street

Cost from office job book: Phase 2: £403 13s 2d; Phase 3: £1778 18s ½d; Phase 4: £522 8s 9d; Phase 5: £296 18s 5d; Phase 6: £334 17s 6d

Cost from other sources: Phase 1: £1740 9s 9d 2

Status: Standing building; exterior and interior of ground floor and basement reconstructed. Tea-room interiors removed to storage in 1971 and subject to conservation since 1992; partly exhibited from 1996. (2014) 3

Listing category: B: Listed as '205–17 (odd nos) Ingram Street with 94–104 (even nos) Miller Street' (the building)

Historic Scotland/HB Number: 32736 (the building)

RCAHMS Site Number: NS56NE 327

Grid Reference: NS 59246 65242

GPS coordinates: lat = 55.859753, lng = -4.250420   (Map)

Notes:

1: Berlin, Werkbundarchiv, Museum der Dinge: Hermann Muthesius Estate, letters from Mackintosh to Hermann Muthesius, 24 January 1900, 12 July 1900; Glasgow City Archives Collection: Dean of Guild Court plans, B4/12/1/7863; 'Studio Talk', Studio, 28, 1903, pp. 286–8.

2: This figure appears in the records of measurers Danskin & Purdie who were frequently involved in Mackintosh's work for Miss Cranston. J. M. Trushell, 'Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms: Cost Analyses', Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society Newsletter, 67, Summer 1995, p. 4.

3: Roger Billcliffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings and Interior Designs, Moffat, Dumfriesshire: Cameron & Hollis, 4th edn, 2009, pp. 97–8, 240.