Established | April 14, 1964 (as Glasgow Museum of Transport) June 21, 2011 (as Riverside Museum) |
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Location | 100 Pointhouse Road, Partick, Glasgow, G3 8RS, Scotland, [1] (The site overlaps Yorkhill Quay to the east) |
Collection size | 3,000 objects |
Visitors | 1,364,739 (2019) [2] |
Public transit access | Partick Govan |
Website | www.glasgowlife.org.uk |
The Riverside Museum (replacing the preceding Glasgow Museum of Transport) is a museum in the Partick area of Glasgow, Scotland, [1] housed in a building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, with its River Clyde frontage at the new Pointhouse Quay. It forms part of the Glasgow Harbour regeneration project. The building opened in June 2011, winning the 2013 European Museum of the Year Award. It houses many exhibits of national and international importance. The Govan–Partick Bridge, provides a pedestrian and cycle path link from the museum across the Clyde to Govan, opened in 2024.
The Museum of Transport was opened on 14 April 1964 by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. [3] [4] Created in the wake of the closure of Glasgow's tramway system in 1962, it was initially located at the former Coplawhill tram depot on Albert Drive in Pollokshields, before moving to the Kelvin Hall in 1988. [5] The old building was subsequently converted into the Tramway arts centre. [6]
The museum was then situated inside the Kelvin Hall opposite the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in the west end of Glasgow. The Kelvin Hall was built in 1927, and operated as an exhibition centre, then was converted in 1987 to house the Museum of Transport and the Kelvin Hall International Sports Arena.
The Kelvin Hall site itself closed in April 2010, with the Museum moving to its third home at the Riverside Museum in June 2011. [7]
The museum at Kelvin Hall closed on 18 April 2010, with most of its collections moved to the purpose-built Riverside Museum at Pointhouse, [8] located next to the confluence between the River Kelvin and the Clyde. This site, where the former A. & J. Inglis shipyard built the PS Waverley, enables the Clyde Maritime Trust's tall ship Glenlee and other visiting craft to berth alongside the museum. [9] The current museum opened on Tuesday 21 June 2011.
The Riverside Museum building was designed by Zaha Hadid Architects and engineers Buro Happold. [10] The internal exhibitions and displays were designed by Event Communications, a specialist London-based museum design firm. [11]
Of the £74 million needed for the development of the Riverside Museum, Glasgow City Council and the National Lottery Heritage Fund have committed £69 million. The Riverside Museum Appeal is a charitable trust established to raise the final £5 million in sponsorship and donations from companies, trusts and individuals for the development of the museum. The Riverside Museum Appeal Trust is recognised as a Scottish Charity SC 033286. [12] Major patrons of the project include: BAE Systems Maritime – Naval Ships, Weir Group, Rolls-Royce Holdings, FirstGroup, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, Caledonian MacBrayne, Arnold Clark, SSE plc, Diageo, Bank of Scotland and Optical Express. [13]
On 13 November 2007 the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Bob Winter cut the first turf. [14] The main contractors for the project were BAM Construct UK Ltd [15] with a range of trade subcontractors including the services installations being delivered by BBESL's team of Jordan Kerr, Gordon Ferguson & Jamie Will and FES, project management being the responsibility of Capita Property and Infrastructure and Buro Happold providing Resident Engineering Services. The building was completed on 20 June 2011 and the next day it opened to the public. [16]
As well as housing many of the existing collections of the Glasgow Museum of Transport, the city has acquired SAR Class 15F 4-8-2 steam locomotive, No.3007. Built by the Glasgow-based North British Locomotive Company at its Polmadie Works in 1945, the locomotive was bought in late 2006 from Transnet. [17] It was on display in George Square for a short time in 2007, as part of the effort to raise the £5 million public contribution funding. [18]
The museum housed the oldest surviving pedal cycle and the world's leading collection of Scottish-built cars and trucks, including pioneering examples from Scottish manufacturers Argyll, Arrol-Johnston and Albion. More modern Scottish-built cars, namely the Rootes Group's Hillman Imp, Hillman Avenger and Chrysler Sunbeam were represented too along with many other motorcars in a large showroom-type display sponsored by Arnold Clark.
All forms of transport were featured, from horse-drawn vehicles to fire engines, from motorcycles to caravans, even toy cars and prams.
In the Clyde Room was a display of some 250 ship models, [19] representing the contribution of the River Clyde and its shipbuilders and engineers to maritime trade and the Royal Navy, including the Comet of 1812, the Hood, the Howe, the Queen Mary, and the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2.
Locomotive manufacture was also an important Glasgow industry and the museum celebrated the city's railway heritage, including locomotives such as:
Other main exhibits displayed the evolution of Glasgow's public transport system and included seven Glasgow Corporation Tramways tramcars from different eras, Glasgow Corporation trolleybuses, and the reconstruction of "Kelvin Street", which aimed to recapture the atmosphere of 1930s Glasgow, including full-scale replicas of a pre-1977 Glasgow Subway station and the Regal Cinema, which played Scottish transport documentaries such as Seawards the Great Ships .
Glasgow is the most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in west central Scotland. The city is the third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom and the 27th-most-populous city in Europe. In 2022, it had an estimated population as a defined locality of 632,350 and anchored an urban settlement of 1,028,220.
Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a key figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972. In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".
The North British Locomotive Company was created in 1903 through the merger of three Glasgow locomotive manufacturing companies; Sharp, Stewart and Company, Neilson, Reid and Company and Dübs and Company, creating the largest locomotive manufacturing company in Europe and the British Empire and the second largest in the world after the Baldwin Locomotive Works in the United States.
Yorkhill is an area in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated north of the River Clyde in the West End of the city. It is known for its famous hospitals and remains the location of the West Glasgow Ambulatory Care Hospital.
The Kelvin Hall, located on Argyle Street in Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the largest exhibition centres in Britain and now a mixed-use arts and sports venue that opened as an exhibition venue in 1927. It has also been used as a concert hall, home to the Kelvin Hall International Sports Arena to 2014, and from 1988 to 2010, Glasgow's Museum of Transport. As part of the economic redevelopment of Greater Glasgow promoted by the Scottish Development Agency and local authorities to enhance the city's tourist infrastructure and to attract further national and international conferences, the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre was designed as the Hall's successor for exhibitions and entertainments, built in 1983 and opened on the nearby Queen's Dock in 1985 with an exhibition area equal in size to the Kelvin Hall but with the benefit of extensive car parks and land for other complementary buildings. The Hall is protected as a category B listed building, and is served by city bus services and by Kelvinhall subway station.
The Scottish Maritime Museum is an industrial museum with a Collection Recognised as Nationally Significant to Scotland. It is located at two sites in the West of Scotland in Irvine and Dumbarton, with a focus on Scotland's shipbuilding heritage.
A & J Inglis Limited, was a shipbuilding firm founded by Anthony Inglis and his brother John, engineers and shipbuilders in Glasgow, Scotland in 1862. The firm built over 500 ships in a period of just over 100 years. Their Pointhouse Shipyard was at the confluence of the rivers Clyde and Kelvin. They constructed a wide range of ships, including Clyde steamers, paddle steamers and small ocean liners. In wartime, they built small warships, and in the period after World War II, they built a number of whalers.
Glasgow Corporation Tramways were formerly one of the largest urban tramway systems in Europe. Over 1000 municipally-owned trams served the city of Glasgow, Scotland, with over 100 route miles by 1922. The system closed in 1962 and was the last city tramway in Great Britain.
The Glasgow trolleybus system operated in and immediately surrounding the city of Glasgow, Scotland, between 1949 and 1967, with the network reaching its largest extent in 1959. It was the only British system to open after World War II.
Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life is an industrial and social history museum in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is situated on the site of the Victorian Summerlee Iron Works and the former Hydrocon Crane factory. The main Hydrocon factory building became the museum’s exhibition hall but it has been substantially changed and adapted since. The museum aims to show Lanarkshire's contribution to engineering, mining, steel working, weaving and farming, and also show the lives of the people of the area. It includes interactive displays and a temporary exhibition space. Entry is free of charge.
The 20 km long Clyde Waterfront Regeneration, launched in 2003, embraced a section of the River Clyde in Scotland that runs from Glasgow Green in the city's center to Dumbarton down river. This scene focussed on earlier initiatives underway from the 1980s, and as a separate marketing tool, with several local authorities involved, came to an end in 2014.
The city of Glasgow, Scotland is particularly noted for its 19th-century Victorian architecture, and the early-20th-century "Glasgow Style", as developed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Hurst, Nelson and Company Ltd was a railway rolling stock manufacturer based in Motherwell, Scotland. The company also built many railway wagons, as well as trams and trolleybus carosseries for several local authorities.
The Clyde Model Dockyard was a famous toy and model shop in Glasgow. Established in 1789, it was located at 22–23 Argyll Arcade. The firm manufactured a range of boats and sailing yachts, but were probably best known for their 0 scale model railway stock and accessories.
The South African Railways Class 15F 4-8-2 of 1938 is a steam locomotive.
Zaha Hadid Architects is British architecture and design firm founded by Zaha Hadid (1950–2016), with its main office situated in Clerkenwell, London. After the death of "starchitect" Hadid, Patrik Schumacher became head of the firm, yet had to pay for use of the former business partners name at the time with a staff of 400, mostly free labour of interns sourced from teaching positions occupied by senior staff, with 36 projects across 21 countries.
The G&SWR 5 Class were 0-6-0T steam locomotives designed by Peter Drummond for the Glasgow and South Western Railway (G&SWR) and introduced in 1917. The class was originally designated 5 Class but, after the G&SWR's 1919 renumbering, this was changed to 322 Class. After passing to the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in 1923 they were given power classification 2F.
The Kelvin Valley Railway was an independent railway designed to connect Kilsyth, an important mining town in central Scotland, with the railway network. It connected Kilsyth to Kirkintilloch and thence over other railways to the ironworks of Coatbridge, and to Maryhill, connecting onwards to the Queen's Dock at Stobcross.
The Govan-Partick Bridge is a new bridge in Glasgow, Scotland, to carry pedestrians and bicycles across the River Clyde, connecting Water Row in Govan to Pointhouse Quay in Partick, close to the Riverside Museum. To allow ships including PS Waverley to pass by, its swing bridge main span can rotate to align with the south shore. The official opening ceremony on 6 September 2024 was followed by public access from the next day, when crowds celebrated with community events on both sides of the river.
Kelvinhaugh is a neighbourhood in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is situated directly north of the River Clyde in the West End of the city.