An unusual French Renaissance style tenement building at Bridgeton Cross in Glasgow. Built in the 1870s to house a branch of the Glasgow Savings Bank, it was designed by John Burnet. In the 1890s, the bank moved to a new, larger premises which had been constructed next door.
The entrance to the former Bridgeton Public Library on Landressey Street in the East End of Glasgow. Designed by J.R. Rhind and built in 1903, it's now home to the Glasgow Women's Library.
I love this beautiful little church on Dalmarnock Road in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow. Originally built as an Evangelical Union Chuch in 1901, it was designed by J.C. MacKellar in an Art Nouveau style and is reminiscent of Charles Rennie MacKintosh's 1899 Ruchill Parish Church Halls and his Queen's Cross Church, also built in 1899.
A pair of beautifully carved roundels on a tenenent building on Dalmarmock Road at Bridgton Cross in Glasgow.
The initials on the left hand one most likely stand for the Glasgow Eastern Cooperative Society Limited, and indicate that this tenement was built by this community-owned organisation.
Similar reminders of how much the Cooperative Movement contributed to Glasgow's development can be found across the city.
The Olympia in Bridgeton, Glasgow. Designed by George Arthur and Son and first opened in 1911, this building has gone through a fairly typical cycle for a Glasgow entertainment venue. It started life as the Olympia Theatre of Varieties before becoming a cinema in the 1920s. The cinema closed in the 1970s and it became a bingo hall.
After that it served time as a furniture warehouse, lay empty for a while and in 2004, like so many empty buildings in the city, was hit by a serious fire. Much of the building was then demolished in 2011. Luckily the facade was retained and the new building it contains now serves as Bridgeton Public Library.
This is a beautiful little tenement building on Main Street in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow, especially the crenellation on the top of the corner tower.
The imposing Romanesque Basilica style Church of the Sacred Heart on Dalmarnock Road in Glasgow. Designed by C.J. Menart, and built in 1909, to me, this is quite reminiscent of the early work by Jack Coia, such as his 1932 Saint Anne's Church in Dennistoun and his 1941 Saint Columba's Church in Woodside, and I wonder if it might have influenced his architectural development.
I love this feature of the Glasgow Women's Library in Bidgeton. Designed in 2016 by Collective Architecture, it's cladding for a lift tower featuring selected titles from the library's collection. It's a great way to blend a modern adaptation on to an old building while linking it to the building's new function.
The simple, but stunning Landressy Street facade of John Gordon's 1894 Glasgow Savigs Bank building in Bridgeton, Glasgow. I just love those chimneys and the scalloping along the roofline!
The former Bridgeton Public Library on Landressy Street in the east end of Glasgow. Designed by J.R. Rhind in a Classical style and built in 1903, it's now home to the Glasgow Women's Library.
The former Greenhead Power-Loom Weaving Factory in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow. Designed by Ninian MacWhannell and constructed in 1888 for Thomas Thomson, this was one of the last multi-storey weaving factories. By the 1880s most new power-loom factories were constructed as single storey buildings.
John Thomson's Classical style tenement building at Bridgeton Cross on the East End of Glasgow. It was built in 1871, meaning it's probably the oldest remaining building at these crossroads.
I love this ghost sign on Olympia Street in the Bridgeton area of Glasgow. Miller's Linoleum Stores was established in 1893 by William Millard, a travelling linoeum salesman from London. The shop on Olympia Street was built in 1913, and is currently run by William's great grandsons, David and Stephen.
I couldn't pinpoint for a while what I felt was very wrong with #Bridgeton, and all the "forced racial correctness" of several #Netflix productions.
As I read yesterday about the Demerara massacre again (where British official brutally suppressed a non-violent protest in Guyana's sugar plantations exactly 200 years ago), I could finally pinpoint what is wrong.
Productions like Bridgeton are a shameful attempt of whitewashing the sins of colonialism and racism. Nothing less, nothing more.
They depict this ideal late-18th century Britain as a place where folks of African or Caribbean descent held noble titles, intermingle with white nobility, and even the queen herself is a racial mix.
Nothing could be further away from reality.
At that time, Britain was still all in with the lucrative slave trade, it used to indulge in what later was formalized into Kipling's racist doctrine of "the superior white man educating the inferior black man", and it used some among the most violent repression strategies of the time to suppress any form of dissent in its colonies.
Given the popularity of such productions with the young, I'm afraid that we're raising a generation that will underestimate the atrocities committed by their ancestors.
Can you imagine a Netflix production that takes place in the 1940s and it shows Jews and Nazi Germans peacefully coexisting and intermingling with one another? If we would be outraged at such a distortion of German history, why do we allow it when it comes to British history?
The former Olympia Theatre of Varieties in Bridgeton, Glasgow. Designed by George Arthur and Son in a Stripped Edwardian Baroque style and constructed in 1910, this building now houses the Bridgeton Library.
Another unlisted ecclesiastical building from the east end of Glasgow, this time in a much worse state of repair. This is the former Saint Clement's Parish Church and hall on Brook Street. It was built in 1877. It is on the Buildings At Risk Register.
Former Salvation Army Hall, Bridgeton, Glasgow. Designed by John Hamilton and built in 1927, this is a rather wonderful building with a very distinctive roof line, which reminds me of a fractal.
As far as I can work out, it's not listed, which surprises me quite a bit, but it's currently being converted into offices for local businesses by Clyde Gateway.