Old Photograph Westbourne Gardens Kelvinside Glasgow Scotland

Old photograph of Westbourne Gardens in Kelvinside, Glasgow, Scotland. The developers of Hillhead, Kelvinside and Dowanhill sought to entice the burgeoning mercantile classes of Glasgow to grand new terraced and detached houses using the attractions of the fresh air and hilltop views, as well as the distance from the less salubrious sections of the city. Eventually, many of the great names in Glasgow commerce resided in the West End, and after the University of Glasgow moved to Gilmorehill in 1870, the area also became the home of the city's academic elite. In order to attract the cream of Glasgow society, the developers of the West End had to offer the highest standard of suburban building. In the second half of the nineteenth century Glasgow had many gifted architects who were capable of providing designs for these superlative buildings. Among the most renowned were: Charles Wilson, designer of Kirklee Terrace but best known for the Park Circus area on Woodlands Hill; Alexander " Greek " Thomson designer of Great Western Terrace, Westbourne Terrace and Northpark Terrace; John T. Rochead designer of Buckingham Terrace, Buckingham Terrace West and Grosvenor Terrace; and James Thomson designer of Crown Circus, Crown Gardens, Ashton Terrace, Belhaven Terrace, Belhaven Terrace West and Devonshire Terrace. Other architects who built the West End, and also lived there, were James Miller, John Keppie, Sir John J. Burnet, and, of course, Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose house at 78 Southpark Avenue was demolished in 1963 and the interior features stored away for nearly twenty years before being reconstructed to form part of the Hunterian Art Gallery at Glasgow University.



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