Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson
Alexander Thomson is one of the two great architects of international stature produced by Victorian Glasgow. Thomson was born in Balfron in 1817, and died at home in the south side of Glasgow in 1875.
He was responsible for a vast array of significant buildings, designing tenements, churches, warehouses, factories, villas and much more. He helped to shape the growing city and define its unique architectural style.
In his day, Thomson was conspicuous for his originality in producing a distinctive modern architecture from the lessons and precedents provided by the Greeks, Egyptians and other ancient civilisations, and made extensive use of new materials like cast-iron and plate-glass.
Whilst many of his unique buildings remain, including St Vincent Street Church, Holmwood, the Centre for Contemporary Arts on Sauchiehall Street, Great Western Terrace, and the ruins of the Caledonia Road Church, around one-third of buildings he completed have been destroyed or lost. (Approx 80 remain, and 37 have been lost - including Queens Park Church and Queens Park Terrace, two of the finest and most distinctive buildings ever produced in Scotland).
Thomson’s style was extraordinary, whilst many architects of the time were using the models of the past for their contemporary architecture, Thomson took the spirit of these buildings and individual components from across the ancient world and brought them together to create a unique style suitable for a booming city like Glasgow.
“Glasgow in the last 150 years has had two of the greatest architects of the Western world. C.R.Mackintosh was not highly productive but his influence in central Europe was comparable to such American architects as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. An even greater and happily more productive architect, though one whose influence can only occasionally be traced in America in Milwaukee and in New York City and not at all as far as I know in Europe, was Alexander Thomson.” Henry Russell Hitchcock, 1966