Glasgow, 45 Chamberlain Road, Jordanhill Training College

Jordanhill School, 45 Chamberlain Road, 1913, Honeyman Keppie & Mackintosh

Former Training College Demonstration School. New type of institutional symmetry, with central administration block and rear hall, plus long corridor access wings, for a new Education Authority. Mackintosh's competition-winning design was not completed and the plan was enclosed in a disappointingly institutional Beaux-Arts stone shell by Graham Henderson, chief draughtsman and later a partner in the firm of Keppie & Henderson. There are no lightening Mackintosh touches. Mackintosh was sacked from his partnership at this time because his sketches for the entire Jordanhill complex were on tracing paper and contained many minor faults. He was accused of being a drunk and a bad timekeeper; in reality he was suffering a clinical depression brought about by a sharp decline in the volume of business. The rift may also have been partly because he had not married Keppie's sister, with whom there had been a longstanding friendship; she was infatuated with him, but he had married Margaret Macdonald in 1900.

Taken from "Greater Glasgow: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Sam Small, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk