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

Background

Miss Catherine (Kate) Cranston commenced business in Ingram Street in September 1886 at 205 Ingram Street, part of a five-storey, yellow sandstone building with French-style mansard roofs dating from the mid 1870s. 1 By 1895, she had acquired 209 Ingram Street, immediately adjacent to the W., and advertised in the Glasgow Post Office Directory as 'Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms' at 205 and 'Miss Cranston's Lunch Rooms' at 209. In 1900, 215 was added, and by 1907, the property on the corner of Miller Street, 217 Ingram Street, had also been absorbed. 2

Despite the extensive alterations and additions made, Ingram Street remained a leased property. 3 Over a period of 12 years, beginning in 1900, Miss Cranston employed Mackintosh to remodel and redecorate the four originally separate ground-floor and basement units. During the 1890s, 205 had been redecorated by Kesson Whyte and Alexander Howell of Glasgow and 209 by Edinburgh designers Scott Morton & Co. 4

Mackintosh's work was carried out in six separate phases; the first appears to have been a private commission. As an employee of John Honeyman & Keppie, Mackintosh was permitted to undertake private work, but this ceased once he became a partner in 1901. 5 The first phase is therefore not recorded in the job books, unlike the five later phases. Evidence for the costs of the first phase is given in the records of measurers Danskin & Purdie. 6

Only four drawings for the first phase of work survive, making it difficult to understand in detail the tea rooms' development. The following description relies heavily on photographs taken in the 1940s, 1950 and 1971; drawings made for proposed alterations in the 1950s; and survey drawings made in 1971 when the surviving interiors were carefully recorded before removal to storage. Numerous drawings by Mackintosh for furniture, fittings and textiles survive. 7

First phase: 1900–1

In January 1900 Mackintosh wrote to Hermann Muthesius about a new job he was to undertake for Miss Cranston. This commission marked a significant development in his career as a designer of tea rooms: at the Buchanan Street tea rooms (1896) and the Crown Lunch and Tea Rooms in Argyle Street, he had worked for Miss Cranston alongside George Walton on furniture and decoration. This time, as he wrote in January 1900, he was 'doing all the work myself – furniture – decoration – fitting' and believed optimistically that 'This will be done in three or four months.' 8 In fact, the work went beyond furniture, decoration and fittings, to include structural additions and alterations for which the permission of the Dean of Guild Court was required. It was not completed until January 1901. 9

Mackintosh's drawings were approved by the Glasgow Dean of Guild Court on 19 April 1900. 10 Work involved remodelling, extending and decorating the ground-floor space in the newly acquired building at 215, fitting out the basement billiard rooms, and remodelling and extending the service spaces at the rear of 205 and 209. Although the removal of wood partitions in the tea room at 209 was proposed, it appears that Mackintosh did not carry out work here until later. 11

The White Dining Room

The ground-floor of 215 Ingram Street was transformed by Mackintosh into the White Dining Room (also known as the Ladies' Luncheon Room) by creating a mezzanine within the 4.5 m (14.5 ft) high space, reached by a new stair against the E. wall. An existing stair at the W. wall was removed, and a wooden beam and rolled-steel joist for the mezzanine were inserted at a height of approximately 2.5 m (8.5 ft).

Partition walls were erected to provide a low-ceilinged service area and lavatories on the ground floor, and additional tea-room space on the mezzanine, and new doorways were made in the wall adjoining 209. A long, painted wooden screen with leaded, stained-glass panels was inserted to the right of the entrance to separate circulation and dining spaces. At the back of the building, the ground floor was extended into the yard to provide further lavatories.

A series of square wooden columns was installed in front of the full-height windows, with panels connecting them to the window mullions, and fitted bench seating between. A white-painted picture-rail ran across the windows and doorway, from which rose wooden and glazed ornaments to connect with the ceiling. The black-painted entrance doors, each with nine small square lights recall the entrance at the Glasgow School of Art. Leaded glazing was installed above.

The E. and W. walls were clad to balcony height with broad vertical panels, covered with aluminium leaf, which terminated in a shelf-like projecting picture-rail. The stair balustrade formed an open screen with a horizontal top rail, which curved upwards to form the top of the solid, panelled balcony balustrade. Below the balustrade, the stair wall was also panelled, recalling the headmaster's office at the Glasgow School of Art. The cashier's desk was inserted under the stairs, with a curious elliptical arched opening embellished with slender pilasters. The S. wall was dominated by a lead-clad fireplace. Decoration of the balcony included a stencilled stylised tree, and stained glass panels concealing a ventilation duct. 12

Facing each other, high on the E. and W. walls were Mackintosh's Wassail and Margaret Macdonald's May Queen gesso panels. Mackintosh's pleasure at working alongside Macdonald on the panels was relayed to Hermann Muthesius in a letter of July 1900, which also tells of the couple's forthcoming marriage and their invitation to exhibit in Vienna later that year. 13 The gesso panels were among the works despatched to Austria on 25 September 1900 for inclusion in the Mackintoshes' room at the Eighth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession which opened on 3 November. 14 As the White Dining Room was not completed until January 1901, it seems probable that the panels were not installed until after their return from Vienna.

The tea room's colour scheme, decoration and art work closely parallel aspects of the Mackintoshes' first home together at 120 Mains Street. Work on both projects must have been carried out concurrently, and it has been proposed that the tea room represents a public version of their private, domestic environment. 15

Basement

The interconnected basements of numbers 205, 209 and 215 were accessed by stairs descending between numbers 205 and 209. The public area, consisting of two smoking rooms and, at the W., a billiard room, was on the N. side, with bays extending under the street to benefit from natural light admitted through pavement lights. To the S. were kitchens, stores and services. Work in 1900–1 appears to have concentrated in the public area and on new drains. All three rooms of this male domain were redecorated by Mackintosh in a unified style using sombre tones. The beams of the low ceiling were left exposed. Walls were clad throughout with dark-stained panelling, the tops of each vertical division having a square recessed panel, a feature which appears later in the House for an Art Lover dining room design. Settles were installed in two bays in the S. wall of the billiard room. A score board with Mackintosh's distinctive numerals was fitted on the W. wall above the fireplace, with cue racks to either side. The billiard table may also have been designed by Mackintosh but no records survive to confirm this.

Cloister Room

Serving and storage areas and a basement staircase at the rear of the ground floor of 205 and 209 Ingram Street were remodelled to form a single tea-room space, known by 1911 as the Cloister Room. 16 It was lit from a clerestory above the arches, where Mackintosh installed leaded stained glass. Behind the arches was a single-storey servery with a higher floor level. (Its glazed roof appears to have been replaced later at a higher level.) S. of the servery, a kitchen with pitched and glazed roof was constructed. The clerestory extended round to the N. to light the earliest tea room (later the Blue or Chinese Room) at the front of 205.

Measurers' records

Details of the estimated and final cost of Mackintosh's 1900–1 work for Miss Cranston at Ingram Street are documented in the 'cube books' of the measurers John Danskin & Purdie, who worked on all four of Miss Cranston's tea rooms. These record the cubic capacity measurements for each type of work at both tender stage and completion. The proposed additions and alterations to Ingram Street were estimated at £945 18s 7d and included mason, wright, plaster, plumber, gasfitter and painter work. The final measurement brought the cost in at £1,740 9s 9d, 84% more than the estimate. The reason for this significant increase is not certain. It may have been due to additional work requested by the client, but amendments made by the architect may also have contributed. In contrast, Mackintosh's 1903 work at the Willow Tea Rooms cost only 2.2% more than was estimated. 17

Phase 2: 1904–5

This phase of work, described in Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh's job books as 'interior alterations at existing premises', appears to have been purely decorative. Substantial payments were recorded for painting and electric lighting only. It is not known in which areas this work was carried out.

Phase 3: 1907–8

By the beginning of 1907, Miss Cranston had leased the property at the corner of Ingram Street and Miller Street. 18 This consisted of a long, narrow ground-floor space, high like its neighbours to the E., and a basement. There were street entrances on the short N. side on Ingram Street and at the S. end of the many-windowed Miller Street elevation. Stairs opposite this door led down from the ground floor to the basement lavatories. 19 The rest of the basement was occupied by a billiard room, accessed from the basement of 215 Ingram Street next door. The large payments recorded in the job book at this time, including one of over £900 for joiner work, appear to confirm that this phase represents the extensive wooden structure and panelling of the ground-floor and mezzanine 'Oak Room', and the panelled basement billiard room.

Structural additions and alterations were carried out in the newly acquired building: a mezzanine floor was inserted around the N., S. and E. sides with a new wooden staircase at the S.E. corner. The long, E. side of the mezzanine was supported on a series of square wooden columns. The job book entry and 1971 photographs suggest that the mezzanine was supported with a construction of joists, soffits and steel angles. New doorways were created in the party wall on both the ground floor and basement to connect with 215 next door; the Oak Room and billiard room were not directly connected. Despite these structural changes, Dean of Guild Court approval does not appear to have been required – at least, no associated record has been found.

The walls of the Oak Room were panelled on both levels. The mezzanine balustrade was solid, with wavy lattices attached above columns on the N. and E. sides, the vertical elements of the lattices extending upwards to the ceiling. The same treatment continued around the W. side of the room as a screen in front of the full-height windows. In front of the windows on the ground floor was panelling pierced with ovals. The mezzanine stair had balustrades to both sides. The basement stair was screened by widely spaced balusters between which additional balusters with square panels, inlaid with blue glass, were inserted at half height.

The billiard room was panelled in the same fashion as its earlier neighbour (below the White Dining Room) with recessed squares at the top of each panel. The N. wall was embellished with a central niche vertically bisected by a part-organic, part-geometric motif carved and inlaid with glass. Seating was installed along the N. and S. walls. The billiard table was supplied by Burroughs & Watts; it is not known if it was made to a Mackintosh design. 20

Phase 4: 1909–10

The next phase of work is described in the job book as 'Alterations, Ingram Street & Miller Street property'. The payments appear to confirm that this work represents the ground-floor Ladies Rest Room and mezzanine Oval Room located to the S. of the Oak Room. Structural work was carried out, but no associated Dean of Guild Court records have been found.

The 1971 drawings show a deep bay at the E. end of the Ladies' Rest Room projecting into the rear yard, with a curved, glazed, interior wall immediately inside it. A doorway in the N. wall connected with the Oak Room. It is not certain whether this was new or existing.

The Oval Room, which probably served as a tea room, was a new wooden structure inserted into an existing space, supported on stout structural columns at the E. and W. The E. wall projected slightly into the rear yard and was constructed of a grid of glass panels, which admitted light but obscured the unattractive view, a tactic previously employed by Mackintosh at the Dutch Kitchen in Argyle Street. The curved W. end of the room consisted of a vertically slatted screen in front of the full-height windows to Miller Street. It recalled an earlier screen for Miss Cranston's music room at Hous'hill. The Oval Room walls were covered in canvas divided into vertical panels by thin wooden straps. The structural columns at both ends of the room were highlighted with carved geometric decoration. Wide studs, each pierced with three oval shapes, marked the edges of the open screen. A doorway in the N. wall connected with the Oak Room mezzanine. It is not certain whether this was a new or existing doorway. 21

Phase 5: 1911–12

In 1911 Mackintosh worked on three projects for Miss Cranston: the interiors of her White Cockade café at the Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry, followed by two rooms in the oldest part of the Ingram Street premises, which were recorded separately in the practice job books. The 'Blue Room' (also known as the Chinese Room) was created at 205 Ingram Street and alterations were made to the 'Cloister Room', at the rear of 205 and 209.

The Blue or Chinese Room

The 'Blue Room' is the name given in the job-book entry, but on a drawing of 1911, formerly owned by Thomas Howarth, it is referred to in an inscription by Mackintosh as the 'China Tea Room'. 22

No structural alterations appear to have been made. Instead, Mackintosh used wooden lattice panels, painted in a 'muted prussian blue', to modify the height and width of the space, and to disguise the gradual narrowing from front to back. 23 By this date, lattice panels had been a feature of his work for around a decade, beginning with the 1901 exhibition stand for the Glasgow School of Art.

The ceiling height was disguised by introducing horizontal lattice panels at intervals, at a height corresponding approximately to the mezzanines in the neighbouring street-facing rooms. The ceiling above was painted a dark tone. The walls were covered with a wooden framework to which panels of painted, woven rush overlaid with wooden lattice were attached. On both long walls, and corresponding to the ceiling panels, lattice-work projections helped to disguise the irregular shape of the room. The wall panels were inlaid with red and green squares of an early plastic material, casein, and concave niches with mirrored glass strips. 24 Lattice panels inlaid with coloured glass made by Stephen Adam obscured the windows. Two free-standing lattice panels were positioned along the centre of the space. These had tall posts at each end, decorated with pagoda-like finials. Electric light fittings hung from the horizontal lattice panels. 25

A tall, narrow cashier's booth, constructed of open and solid lattice panels stood at the front of the room. Its design may have developed from the form of the light fittings in the Glasgow School of Art library. Three short single timbers with curved ends projected from the top of the booth. Above and at right-angles to these, pairs of similar but much longer timbers – reminiscent of those at Martyrs School – projected towards the rear of the room. Behind the cashier's booth was a carved and pierced wooden canopy over the doorway leading to the Cloister Room, kitchens and ancillary rooms.

The Cloister Room

A decade after Mackintosh first remodelled it, the Cloister Room was altered for a second time. The wooden screen at the E. end and the clerestory glass were retained. 26 No structural alterations were made, but the height was lowered by inserting a barrel-vaulted, fibrous plaster ceiling. This was embellished with broad ribs of relief moulding in the form of loosely twisted ribbons, and had three recessed domes from which hung electric lights. Raised panels of stepped profile decorated the walls. Their edges were picked out in painted lozenge patterns recalling the gallery balustrades in the Glasgow School of Art library. Between these panels the smooth wood was divided by thin vertical straps with chamferred tops, also decorated with the lozenge motif. The W. ends of both the N. and S. walls were enlivened by niches lined with strips of mirrored glass and with geometric carving over their stepped heads. There were similar niches in the W. wall, and a central, larger niche with an arched top of sinuous pierced carving. 27

It has been suggested that the lozenge motif may be derived from recent Viennese work: examples delineating the edges of walls or panels can be found, for instance, in the work of Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Otto Schönthal and Marcel Kammerer exhibited at the Kunstschau, Vienna, in 1908. 28

Reception

It appears that only Mackintosh's earliest work at Ingram Street was published. Five photographs of the White Dining Room appeared in the Studio in spring 1903, two years after completion: a view of the cashier's desk and glazed wooden screen; the fireplace; the two gesso panels; and an example of the stencilled wall decoration. The accompanying text explained: 'The work of Mr Charles R. Mackintosh is so well known and appreciated by readers of The Studio that it is unnecessary to describe at length the decorations, here illustrated, which he has recently completed for one of Miss Cranston's tea rooms in this city. Suffice it to say that it more than maintains the high reputation of this talented and imaginative designer.' 29

Reviews of the Mackintoshes' Room at the Eighth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession included comment on the gesso panels, the May Queen and the Wassail. Their intended location in a tea room may have led to one critic's mistaken belief that the Scottish room was a tea room setting rather than simply a display of furniture, decorative art, and watercolours. 30

Later history

On Miss Cranston's retirement in 1919, her Ingram Street Lunch and Tea Rooms were handed over to Jessie Drummond, a former senior manageress at Buchanan Street, which had been the headquarters of Miss Cranston's tea-room empire. Drummond continued the business under Miss Cranston's name until she, too, retired in 1930. The tea rooms were then taken over by established tea and coffee merchant, Cooper & Co. 31

In 1949, it emerged that Cooper & Co. intended to close the tea rooms within a year. The then Director of the Glasgow School of Art, Douglas Percy Bliss, became the central figure in a campaign to preserve the interiors. He entered negotiations with Glasgow Corporation, sought the support of national and international colleagues, and corresponded with the solicitors representing the building's owners. He reported developments in Glasgow to the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, who had already written admiringly of Mackintosh in the 1930s, and who now launched an impassioned press campaign to preserve the tea rooms and raise awareness of their designer.

The campaign gained considerable support and attention. Ultimately, Glasgow Corporation purchased the tea rooms complete with furnishings and fittings for £22,000 in March 1950, and the interiors remained in situ. Between 1950 and 1955, the Corporation's Master of Works and City Engineer department, and Glasgow architect Alexander D. Hislop drew up a series of plans, elevations and sections showing proposed alterations, chiefly to the service spaces and the tea room in 209 Ingram Street. It is not clear whether any of these proposals were carried out. 32

By 1970, 205–217 Ingram Street had ceased to operate as tea rooms. Souvenirs were now sold in the former Oak Room, which was known as the 'Mackintosh Discount Store'. None of the furnishings and fittings had fared well: panelling had been unsympathetically overpainted or varnished; fireplaces had been covered over; polystyrene ceiling tiles had been fitted; new electric fittings and wiring had been installed; and there was dry rot in the basement. Glasgow Corporation was keen to sell the building.

The same year, the Stakis Hotel group had acquired planning permission to redevelop the neighbouring site to the W. as a hotel. They also sought permission to remodel numbers 205–217 while retaining the lunch and tea room interiors. However, the changes necessary to meet health and safety regulations were too extensive and removal was the only option.

The significance of the interiors was recognised legally in December 1970, when the interiors were given statutory protection, listed as category B. Glasgow Corporation's Planning Department assumed responsibility for the future of the interiors and, with staff from the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow School of Art, the methodical documentation of each room was organised prior to removal. An architectural survey, funded by the School of Art, was carried out by Keppie Henderson & Partners, with a photographic survey by Eric Thorburn. The disassembled interiors were subsequently moved to Glasgow Corporation Planning Department stores. 33

In 1974, Glasgow Museums began working on the interiors and components were displayed in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. All material from the tea rooms began to be accessioned and catalogued from that date. In 2014 the majority of the interiors remain in storage. 34

Since 1992, meticulous research, conservation, reconstruction and restoration work has been carried out on the White Dining Room, part of the Oak Room, Blue or Chinese Room, and Cloister Room. In 1992–6, Glasgow Museums undertook the complete conservation and restoration of the White Dining Room. Additional funding was received at this time from the Getty grant programme towards the conservation of the two gesso panels. In 1998–2002, conservation, restoration and reconstruction of the Blue or Chinese Room panelling, of the Cloister Room and part of the Oak Room was carried out by Glasgow Museums, funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and Donald and Jeanne Kahn. Between 2004 and 2007, a programme of research, documentation, photography and condition assessment of the rooms and all surviving furniture and fittings was carried out by Glasgow Museums, with funding from the Scottish Executive. 35

Conservation and restoration work allowed a major part of the White Dining Room to be displayed in the 1996 Charles Rennie Mackintosh exhibition at Glasgow's McLellan Galleries and its subsequent tour of the United States, and to be included in the Victoria & Albert Museum's Art Nouveau 1890–1914 exhibition, which travelled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 2000–1. Since the reopening of the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in 2006, sections of the White Dining Room, Oak Room and Blue or Chinese Room have been on permanent display. 36

A report on the condition of the Ingram Street building and the salvaged interiors was produced as part of the Mackintosh Buildings Survey, led by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society and carried out between 2015 and 2016. 37

In 2018, after a major conservation project, the Oak Room was reassembled as a long-term exhibit in the Scottish Design Galleries at V&A Dundee. 38