The Royal Exchange Square is a public square in Glasgow, Scotland. The square lies between Buchanan Street and Queen Street, opening out Queen Street and Ingram Street to the south of George Square. It is also easily accessible from Buchanan Street on the west side of the square, through two prominent archways at Royal Bank Place. The square is a landmark due to its distinguished architecture which attracts many visitors. [1] [2] It is one of six squares in the city centre.
Tobacco lord William Cunninghame's mansion and gardens fronting Queen Street, and central to the future square, were constructed in 1778 when the wealth of Glasgow soon eclipsed the remainder of Scotland.
Five years later the Royal Bank of Scotland opened in Glasgow, being its first ever branch beyond its Edinburgh base. Under its agent, the merchant and philanthropist David Dale, the bank in Glasgow soon exceeded the business volume of the Royal Bank elsewhere, and to reflect its status the bank moved from the area of Glasgow Cross by buying over Cunninghame's mansion in 1817 and operating from it. In 1827 the Royal Bank sold the Cunninghame mansion to the city for fitting out as an Exchange and its new Glasgow Chief Office branch, designed by Archibald Elliot II, complete with its six pillars and wide stairs, was erected in 1834 facing onto Royal Exchange Square. In 1850 this was extended through to Buchanan Street. [3] [4]
In the centre of the square is the former Royal Exchange, a Graeco-Roman building designed by architect David Hamilton [5] in 1829, where merchants exchanged contracts in cotton, linen, chemicals, coal, iron, steel, timber and other commodities including stocks and shares in newly formed Limited Companies, prior to the Glasgow Stock Exchange being built in Buchanan Street. One hundred and twenty years later, the commercial and commodities markets found other ways of doing business in contrast to the daily gatherings [6] and the Royal Exchange building was bought by Glasgow Corporation in 1949 to become Stirling's Library, named after the donor of the earlier library in Miller Street nearby. [7] [8]
In front of the vast portico is Baron Marochetti's noble bronze equestrian statue of Duke of Wellington, erected in 1844. On the tall granite base are bronze reliefs of the battles of Assaye and Waterloo, the Return of the Soldier, and Peace and Agriculture. [9] From the 1950s the Royal Exchange housed Stirling's Library and the Commercial Library, and now it houses the Gallery of Modern Art.
The architects of the Georgian terraces built around 1830 on the north side are David Hamilton and James Smith of Blythswood Square [10] and on the south side are Robert Black [11] and Archibald Elliot II. [12] The classically designed former Chief Office of the Royal Bank of Scotland stands at the western end of the square. [13]
There are shops and offices, and numerous open air cafés and restaurants. Home to Glasgow's only restaurant with a rooftop terrace, 29 Glasgow is a Members Club with a publicly accessible reataurant and function room. The square is also the home of the Western Club, whose restaurant is also open to the public.. [14] In the winter, the square is usually lit up with a large overhead net of celestial lighting between the Gallery of Modern Art and surrounding buildings.
On the north side at the corner of Queen Street once stood the elegant Theatre Royal which opened in 1805. [15]
At the Queen Street front to Royal Exchange Square and facing along Ingram Street the exquisite equestrian statue of Duke of Wellington created by the Italian-born French sculptor Baron Carlo Marochetti faces along Ingram Street, In recent decades it usually has a traffic cone placed on his head. This was originally a joke by youngsters.
The City Chambers or Municipal Buildings in Glasgow, Scotland, has functioned as the headquarters of Glasgow City Council since 1996, and of preceding forms of municipal government in the city since 1889. It is located on the eastern side of the city's George Square. It is a Category A listed building.
George Square is the principal civic square in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is one of six squares in the city centre, the others being Cathedral Square, St Andrew's Square, St Enoch Square, Royal Exchange Square, and Blythswood Square on Blythswood Hill.
Buchanan Street is one of the main shopping thoroughfares in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. It forms the central stretch of Glasgow's famous shopping district with a generally more upmarket range of shops than the neighbouring streets: Argyle Street, and Sauchiehall Street.
Pollok House, formerly the family seat of the Stirling-Maxwell family, is located at Pollok Country Park in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) is the main gallery of contemporary art in Glasgow, Scotland.
David Hamilton was a Scottish architect based in Glasgow. He has been called the "father of the profession" in Glasgow.
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.
Blythswood Hill, crowned by Blythswood Square, is an area of central Glasgow, Scotland. Its grid of streets extend from the length of the west side of Buchanan Street to Gordon Street and Bothwell Street, and to Charing Cross, Sauchiehall Street and Garnethill. Developed from 1800 onwards, its Georgian and Victorian architecture is a Conservation Area. It started as the "Magnificent New Town of Blythswood", becoming a part of the city-centre's business and social life.
Catherine Cranston, widely known as Kate Cranston or Miss Cranston, was a leading figure in the development of tea rooms. She is nowadays chiefly remembered as a major patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald, in Glasgow, Scotland. The name of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms lives on in reminiscences of Glasgow in its heyday.
Sir John James Burnet was a Scottish Edwardian architect who was noted for a number of prominent buildings in Glasgow and London. He was the son of the architect John Burnet, and later went into partnership with his father, joining an architectural firm which would become an influential force in British Modern architecture in the 20th century.
Glasgow Cross is at the hub of the ancient royal burgh and now city of Glasgow, Scotland, close to its first crossing over the River Clyde. It marks the notional boundary between the city centre and the East End
Cathedral Square is a public square in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. Cathedral Square and precinct is situated adjacent to Glasgow Cathedral on High Street/Castle Street at John Knox Street. Nearby are many famous Glasgow landmarks such as Provand's Lordship, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the Necropolis, the ceremonial Barony Hall of Strathclyde University, and the Glasgow Evangelical Church at the Square. It is one of six public squares and precincts in the city centre.
James Hoey Craigie TD FRIBA was a Scottish architect. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art. In 1894 he won the Alexander Thomson travelling scholarship which he spent in France and Italy. In 1905 he was made a partner in the firm Clarke & Bell, its name changing to Clarke & Bell & J H Craigie.
The Ramshorn, is a deconsecrated church building located on Ingram Street in the Merchant City area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is home to SCILT, Scotland's National Centre for Languages and the Confucius Institute for Scotland's Schools (CISS), both centres within the University of Strathclyde. The building is owned by the University, which bought the church in 1983 and used it as a theatre and performance space from 1992 until 2011.
William Leiper FRIBA RSA (1839–1916) was a Scottish architect known particularly for his domestic architecture in and around the town of Helensburgh. In addition, he produced a small amount of fine ecclesiastical and commercial architecture in Glasgow and the Scottish Lowlands. He was also an accomplished watercolour artist, and from the late 1870s spent much spare time painting in oils and watercolours.
St Andrew's Square is a public square in the city of Glasgow, Scotland and lies to the south east corner of Glasgow Cross, close to Glasgow Green. The square is noted for its immense 18th-century classical church, St Andrew's in the Square, from which the square takes its name. The church was completed in 1758, to the designs of architect Allan Dreghorn and master mason Mungo Naismith and is among the finest of its type anywhere in Britain. The interior has lavish 18th century rococo plasterwork. The building is Category A listed. It is one of six squares in the city centre.
John Baird (1799–1859) was a Glasgow architect of the 19th century, also called John Baird Primus by Thomas Gildard in order for people to be able distinguish him from a second John Baird (1816-93). He was an influential figure in the development of Glasgow’s late Georgian and early Victorian Architecture. He was responsible for around 40 projects and worked in the "background" compared to other Glasgow architects.
The Tobacco Merchant's House is an 18th-century villa at 42 Miller Street in Glasgow's Merchant City and the last surviving Virginia tobacco merchant's house in Glasgow. It was built by John Craig in 1775. The building was extensively renovated in 1994-5 and now serves as the offices of the Scottish Civic Trust.
The Ship Bank or more usually Old Ship Bank was an independent bank formed in Glasgow in 1750: Glasgow's first bank.
Charles Ernest Moro was a Scottish architect, prominent in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. He designed several notable buildings, several of which are now of listed status.
Media related to Royal Exchange Square, Glasgow at Wikimedia Commons