†Additions and alterations to existing building to make new hotel,
for John Macrae, 1875-77
Demolished 1973
Building News 31st December 1875, p.764; Builder, 6th October 1877,
p.1014; Amelia; Glasgow of Today: The Metropolis of the North, London
1888; Builder? 17th December 1917; Walker; Worsdall; G&W; McFadzean
Reconstruction of older building, addition of top floor (with console
brackets of pre-cast concrete combined with cast-iron stanchions) &
extension to back lane. Under construction in December 1875, the hotel
had a 45 foot frontage to Bath Street and a 97 foot frontage to West
Campbell Street and contained 64 bedrooms. In 1877 the Builder noted
that the building was plain except for the upper storey where there were
“pilasters and a well proportioned truss, the whole surmounted by a
massive cornice... Mounting the flight of stairs from Bath-street the
visitor finds himself in a handsome reception-room, lighted by two large
windows of plate-glass, reaching almost from floor to roof, a height of
16 ft., and all the decorations and appointments of which are
appropriate and luxurious. The coffee-room is placed at the end of the
hall, the extremity of the room near Bath-street being a sort of
continuous window, in front of which runs a balcony supporting evergreen
plants. This room is 40 ft. in length, 28 ft. in width, and 16 ft. high.”
The external rusticated masonry facing of the ground floor was in
pre-cast sections; ground floor altered by Keppie & Henderson,
c.1922, for Pettigrew & Stevens, boys' & men's outfitters. A
design for the ‘International Hotel, Bath Street’ by A. & G.
Thomson & Turnbull was exhibited at the Royal Glasgow Institute of
the Fine Arts in 1877.
The upper photograph is taken from some of the
colour slides that survived the fire in Frank Worsdall's house in the mid-1990s and are
now in the care of Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. It shows the building shortly before demolition, after the addition of another storey and the alteration of the Bath Street shop-front for
Pettigrew & Stephens by Keppie & Henderson in c.1922.
The unidentified group photograph shows the original hotel
entrance on Bath Street.
