Anderston Centre - Times Past
In partnership with the Glasgow Times, our archivists are exploring Glasgow's fascinating history. This week, Michael Gallagher writes about the Anderston Centre.
Evidence of Glasgow’s desire for progress can be found throughout the city, but few areas have witnessed as much change as Anderston. From the middle of the 20th century, the district has been subject to almost continuous redevelopment and the curious remains of the Anderston Centre stand as a cautionary tale of civic advancement.
The Anderston Centre owed its existence to the Comprehensive Development Area (CDA) movement: a programme of large-scale clearance and renewal in 29 areas across Glasgow from the 1950s onwards.
This scheme sought to address the city’s housing problems by relocating a quarter of a million people from central Glasgow; some to peripheral estates such as Easterhouse and Drumchapel, others to “new towns” like East Kilbride and Cumbernauld, and yet more to further flung locations across Scotland such as Fife and the Lothians.
Anderston – dubbed “the worst slums I have ever seen” by the poet Sir John Betjeman – was designated a CDA in 1959 and thus flagged for destruction. The original plan was to demolish the area’s 3300 homes and replace them with only 1065 new ones, meaning two-thirds of Anderston’s initial population would be dispersed elsewhere.
Naturally, this came with a significant social cost. But where the Anderston scheme differed from its two contemporary CDAs (Hutchesontown/Gorbals and Pollokshaws) was its impact beyond housing. Anderston CDA included a large portion of land earmarked for city centre uses under Glasgow’s development plan, which meant that the Corporation took control of large-scale commercial redevelopment for the first time.
This so-called development area certainly earned the label “comprehensive”. Anderston would be divided into three zones - residential, industrial and commercial – and intersected by a new ring road system and bridge across the Clyde, designed to ease the growing problem of traffic congestion. It was estimated that the work to acquire, demolish and reconfigure the whole area would take 20 years and cost £20 million. The equivalent value today, in terms of overall economic cost, would be almost £2 billion.
It is against this backdrop that the Anderston Centre was conceived, as a way of fulfilling the commercial aspect of the new plan. A report by the Glasgow Corporation Planning Department in 1962 proclaimed “a new commercial focus for the city” and cited the westward direction of business expansion, away from the city centre, as a key driver. The complex would provide modern shopping and working conditions in a fresh environment, incorporating “excellent transport facilities, easy circulation for traffic, good parking facilities, safety and amenity for pedestrians and high standards of civic design”.
This work was entrusted to the London-based architect Richard Seifert, whose firm was responsible for many major office buildings in the English capital. Seifert’s plans for the 30-acre site were ambitious. They comprised a vast megastructure containing shops, offices, leisure spaces, housing and a bus station, built along modernist lines and characterised by stark concrete exteriors and an unusual, tiered design.
The Anderston Commercial Centre was completed in 1973 and was in some ways an early, wider-ranging version of the modern shopping centre. Its tenants included fashion businesses, electronics chains, supermarkets and even the headquarters of Radio Clyde. However, the somewhat dystopian setting did not make for a pleasant shopping experience. This, coupled with the fact that it was located just too far outside of the main city centre thoroughfares, made business difficult and, gradually, the shops shut down.
The closure of the Anderston Bus Station in the early 1990s was a blow from which the complex could not recover and it rapidly fell into disrepair. Seifert’s plan was never completed as intended, partly due to the difficulty in raising private investment, and his complicated, Escheresque system of walkways, escalators and travelators made the fragmentary site a target for vandals and a source of many social ills. Most of the area was subsequently demolished.
The Anderston Centre, a symbol of comprehensive development, has now itself been redeveloped comprehensively. Still standing are the three high-rise tower blocks – a residential development known as Blythswood Court – around a portion rebranded as Cadogan Square. Only a small section of the original Centre survives: a reminder of Glasgow’s continuous reinvention.
The collections discussed in this article are held by Glasgow City Archives. Please email archives@glasgowlife.org.uk if you have any questions.
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