366 Days of Architecture
Filter by month
Thursday 1st December 2016
Opening doors.
It’s December! Have you opened the first door of your Advent calendar yet, the first one of 24 leading up to Christmas? We’re well in to Advent now, meaning change and new beginnings and here in 1962 the No 9 tram, the last of the Glasgow city trams, is making its final journey from Dalmuir West to Auchenshuggle along Argyle Street, followed by one of the modern buses which replaced it. A bus trip today in 1955 sparked a change when civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested having refused to move to the back of the bus and give her seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, leading to the historic bus boycott, an important symbol of the Civil Rights Movement. Today is celebrated as Rosa Parks Day in some American states.
Wednesday 30th November 2016
Today’s image features an amazing 366 buildings and comes with a dazzling 5,000 word essay*
Yes, today is mostly about St Andrew’s Day but it’d feel like we were conning you if we didn’t say that it’s also the day in 1968 that the UK Trades Description Act came into force, making it a crime for any trader to knowingly sell an item with a misleading label or description. According to the BBC, early complaints included an ‘undetectable’ toupé which was detectable and a pair of washable flares, which proved to be unwashable! We’re making it our business to show you a page from Scotland’s Industrial Souvenir, a fab 1905 trade catalogue designed to promote the nation’s businesses. Published by Bemrose & Sons Ltd, it could be read at Chambers of Commerce, embassies, on passenger liners, and many other places around the world. (*we lied)
Tuesday 29th November 2016
William Hamilton Beattie – the wealthiest architect of them all...
Edinburgh architect William Hamilton Beattie died on this day in 1898 and thus did not get to see his two most famous projects reach completion. Beattie took over his father’s practice, George Beattie & Son, in the 1860s and shortly afterwards picked up several lucrative hotel commissions. He became a key player in developing Edinburgh’s tram system before being asked by Charles Jenner to rebuild his Princes Street store. This led to Beattie being chosen as designer of the North British Hotel, now the Balmoral, in 1893, a gig that took him and the hotel’s directors on a study jaunt to Paris, Amsterdam and Budapest. Upon death his estate was the largest of any Scottish architect – a whopping £42,176 (roughly £4,976,768 in today’s money).
