On My Way to Harlem - The Rough Diamonds of Laurieston

This morning, on hearing Gregory Porter's On My Way to Harlem on the radio, and what with my recent ventures into Laurieston to see some faded glory, I couldn't help thinking that Laurieston was, in spite of my never being to New York, the Harlem of Glasgow (and of my imagination). 

The A-train was the railway bridge over Norfolk Street rattling past from Central Station across the Clyde (which of course was the Hudson).

The solitary standing O2 Academy on Eglington Rd. was the Apollo on W125th Street...

The low-income housing projects of Central Harlem were the Gorbals...

And if you walked far enough up Eglinton Street (not the most salubrious of areas) you might discover Glasgow's very own flatiron building.

I don't know what possessed me to come up with the comparison. No doubts, images implanted from movies, and photographs, and just that general feel I had of walking around a cold and empty Laurieston one day in December. It's strange how thoughts (coupled with a little music) carry you off like that...

This 4-storey 3-bay Art Deco beauty, at 61 Bridge Street, was built in 1935 and designed by Cornelius Armour. It is a distinctive Art Deco facade in an area which has changed dramatically within the last 50 years. Originally built as an extension to the Kinning Park Co-operative Society Drapery Warehouse (which was originally adjacent to the north but has now been demolished) it has lain empty for the past decade although the ground floor seems to operate as a restaurant. No doubt, accumulated neglect will lead to its imminent demolition. So, enjoy it while you can! They sure don't make them like this anymore.

This art deco gem sits abandoned on the corner of Salkeld and Stromness Streets in a predominantly warehouse district of south-central Glasgow, just aside the railway track and the new M74 extension which you can just see at the back. I suppose they could have demolished it with some feeble excuse when building the motorway but they didn't. And so, here she is - Beautiful!

This cream sandstone tenement on the east corner of Norfolk Street and Bridge Street (more or less opposite the underground station) was built in 1898 and designed by James Miller who melded the Glasgow style with a touch of Edwardian baroque detail. Note the polished granite columns and wrought iron gate next door at the Cincinatti Club, and the shipping rondels in the 1st floor red sandstone (John Gordon, 1888).

The Post Office business register of 1879 lists the premises at 537 Eglinton St. as a 'Spirit Merchants'. The building, which I like to think of a dainty version of New York's 'Faltiron' building dates from around this period. Behind to the right, you can clearly see St. Andrew's Gas Works 'singing its song'. This whole area has changed, for the worse in my opinion, with new fangled apartment blocks and a lot of traffic. But the Star Bar's still there, like a little oasis marooned in a stormy sea of chaos. [The photo immediately above shows Eggy Toll (Eglinton Toll) from 1917].

Featuring metal panels between the first and second floor windows and originally designed by Launcelot H. Ross, Cumbrae House was built in 1937-8 as showrooms and offices for Cowen's ideal Trading Stamp Company (Glasgow) Ltd. and restored as modern office space in 1988 by the Houston Bryce Partnership. It is now, as the To Let sign testifies to, happily vacant.

Whenever I wander around areas like Laurieston, and see the faded beauties of a bygone era juxtaposed against the new plastic of the modern era, you can almost see the slow realization, (an idea built out of stone, steel and space), of the 'downward curve'. That is, the curve that makes us realise that space is limited, global population is rapidly increasing, resources are scarce, the planet is finite...

Within a few blocks of space, I see maybe 50 years of architecture, between say 1870-1920 - Secessionist, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Classical, Victorian... and a couple of odd little (more modern) structures along the way (but only a couple and they look as if they'll get blown away with the next gust of wind).

No more will expense be a matter of secondary importance to the idea, to the virtue... We have a responsibility now to tone things down - to build outlandish apartment blocks made of steel, glass and papier mache, to incorporate redundancy by using non-durable materials, to inflict premature ageing with the use of non-local materials... to cut costs on every corner, ceiling cornice and door frame. To make a building whose every component is the result of a 'lowest bid'. No more architraves, rondels, or reliefs. Nothing extraneous, that might give us a glimpse of a god, the Japanese 'kami' of handiwork and love. 'All ornamentation is a crime,' wrote the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, but in fact, rather absurdly, it is the opposite, here, that is the truth today. Stripped back to the bone, buildings today no longer appear to incorporate 'architecture'. They no longer appear to be 'built', rather, they are 'thrown up' in the same swift manner as one might projectily vomit.

Expense will now dictate the expanse of the structure, of its space, its bones, its facade.