M195 Competition design for Glasgow & West of Scotland Technical College

John Honeyman & Keppie was one of eight Glasgow firms invited to submit designs for the Glasgow & West of Scotland Technical College's new building, which would accommodate fifteen distinct departments at one location, at the College's existing site on George Street. Also invited to compete were David Barclay, the eventual winner, Clarke & Bell, James Salmon & Son, Thomson & Sandilands and Watson & Mitchell. John Burnet & Son declined the invitation and James Miller withdrew due to commitments elsewhere. 1

None of the drawings submitted by John Honeyman & Keppie survive but a typed document accompanying their design gives details of the layout, cost, cubic capacity and materials proposed. The plan arranged the building around four sides of the sloping site, with a central building stretching between the E. and W. sides, and a connecting building between the front (S.) and centre ranges. It retained the existing Young Technical Chemistry building at the S.W. The main entrance was placed in the centre of the principal, five-storey, S. elevation to George Street. The prominent S. and E. elevations 'should be of white sandstone from Gif[f]nock or Dunmore quarries'. Other facades were to be of brick, and light wells were to be finished in white enamelled brick. No information about the style of architecture was given. 2

In his pioneering 1952 biography of Mackintosh, Thomas Howarth included a redrawn preliminary sketch for what he believed to be the N. elevation of the Glasgow School of Art, dating from around 1896. 3 While the drawing does not match the requirements set out for the School of Art, its 1/16 scale, the number of storeys and arrangement and length of the elevation do appear to correspond to the design for the Glasgow & West of Scotland Technical College, as David Walker has pointed out. 4

The foundation stone of the new College building, designed by David Barclay, was laid by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on 14 May 1903. 5 The Royal visitors must have arrived or departed from the College via Buchanan Street: a temporary balcony was constructed at Miss Cranston's Buchanan Street Lunch and Tea Rooms from which to view the King and Queen. The new building opened in December 1905. 6

Authorship: The document which accompanied John Honeyman & Keppie's drawings is inscribed with the partners' as well as Mackintosh's names. It is unusual to see Mackintosh's name on practice work before he became a partner later in 1901. Mackintosh's patron Walter W. Blackie, who was a College governor at the time of the competition, but apparently not directly involved in the competition, believed the design to be Mackintosh's work. In a 1944 letter to Howarth he commented: 'I do not think a majority of the Governors would have approved the Mackintosh plans – too fresh and novel, good and practical as they were. The Board consisted almost entirely of leading Glasgow engineers, able men all of them, but shy of novelties and of what they could not fully comprehend.' 7 Mackintosh's original ink sketch on tracing paper was redrawn by Howarth for publication. 8