The fire that ripped through a section of Glasgow on March 8 is a big punch in the stomach for the Scottish city.
It is a city that knows the effect fires can have perhaps more than most.
Allegedly beginning in a shop selling vapes adjacent to the city’s Glasgow Central Station, the blaze ripped through the shop’s multi-use building and caused precautionary evacuations of area hotels.
I believe the entire building is being demolished. Sources say if it is not rebuilt quickly, a burnt shell in the center of the city will have a marked effect on Glaswegians, as it might on residents of any other city if they were unfortunate enough to befall the same fate.
Glasgow’s attractiveness might hint at one reason for its potential exposure to fire.
Of all United Kingdom cities, it is Glasgow that is famed, along with Liverpool, England, for its array of Victorian buildings. One would guess older buildings might be more liable to go up in flames because of age and fragility.
The building that was destroyed was a B-listed building, or a building deemed architecturally important and that requires “building consent for any alterations or demolition to protect their special character,” according to Historic Environment Scotland.
Fires can happen anywhere, of course, but, certainly, Glasgow has seen its share.
Following the fire, the insurance business entered the conversation, with online magazine Insurance Business saying that “the risk profile [of such developments] can become even more complicated where buildings combine several types of occupancy. Mixed-use properties are common in older city centers, where retail units, hospitality venues and residential accommodation often sit within the same structure.”
To see and experience buildings of such age is one of the joys of urban travel.
Very quickly, a desire to repair, renovate and better Glasgow's loved buildings that have undergone disasters has sprung up. The movement is along the lines of the impressive speed in which Paris and the whole of France renovated and reopened its cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.
Politicians spoke of the cathedral’s importance to the French psyche, and this is very understandable. It is a symbol.
Loved buildings were there before one was born and are supposed to be there after one disappears from the planet.
Glasgow is famed for several architects. Alexander Thomson, who went by the nickname “Greek” because of his love for Greek architecture, as well as for that of Egypt, is best known now — it seems as though he was largely ignored during his lifetime — for building Glasgow’s Egyptian Halls, which are on the same street as the city’s most recent fire.
The Egyptian Halls was opened in 1872 and is classed as a A-listed building. That accolade did not stop it going into disrepair in the last half of the 20th century. Only in recent months have there been discussions to restore it to its former glory, with, inevitably, its future use as a hotel being hinted.
The Egyptian Halls could have caught alight from Glasgow's March 8 fire. It is on the same street.
More famous than Thomson is Charles Rennie Mackintosh. His building, the Glasgow School of Art, constructed in 1899 and extended in 1909, was deemed a masterpiece, but it suffered two fires in 2014 and 2018, and work is continuing on its repair.
Another notable building succumbing to fire was the 1872 C’a d’Oro, designed to emulate the original building of that name in Venice. A 1987 fire swept through it. Its reopening in 1990 was a notably swift turnaround, and the repair work was critically applauded.
Let’s hope Glasgow’s other temporarily shuttered, scaffolded and demolished buildings return to their full grandeur very rapidly so that the very soul of this city can be restored.
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