Royal Exchange Square
Royal Exchange Square is located in the centre of Glasgow at the junction of Ingram Street and Queen Street. The Square is dominated by a fine neoclassical building to which it owes its name.
It was originally built in 1778 AD as a town house for William Cunninghame of Lainshaw, who was one of Glasgow’s wealthy Tobacco Lords.
Over the years it has been occupied by several organisations and accordingly performed various functions. The Royal Bank of Scotland owned it from 1817 until 1827 when it became the Royal Exchange. The building was extended and remodelled over the following few years when Corinthian Pillars, a cupola and the large hall were added.
If you look carefully at the photo, almost 200 years later you can still see quite distinctly the different shades of stone used and clearly identify the modifications, front, top and rear. As well as the colouration variations, each section has a “signature” to the architectural styles, which makes sense of the building when you know its history. Despite the shaded low light against a bright sky, the photograph contains the tell-tale details.
In the 1950s, Glasgow District Libraries moved the “Stirling Library” to the building and in the 1990s it was renovated to house Glasgow’s “Gallery of Modern Art” (GoMA), featured in a another article.
I’m not sure whether the “Contemporary Art” features of the façade or even the interior exhibitions sit very well with the classical styles. Perhaps the traffic cone on the statue in front, “Wellington’s Hat” is a public metaphor for what the officials have done to this magnificent structure.
People who struggle to understand Contemporary Arts may find the juxtaposition of the ordered neoclassical old, against the random and unstructured nature of the new, incongruous.
The Cupola.
The steps at the front of the building are a popular meeting place and a good place to sit and watch the world going past.
The magnificent Gallery of Modern Art building in Glasgow’s Royal Exchange Square, floodlit. Viewed from Ingram Street.
My other recent articles about this wonderful Glasgow building:
These photographs were taken in November 2011 using a Fujifilm S5 DSLR. Shot in RAW format and processed in Photoshop CS2 ACR2.4
All the photographs were taken by West Lothian photographer Norman Young and are copyright ©. Please respect copyright.
Should you wish to purchase or use any of the images on this site, please get in touch.
