About a year ago now, I was contacted by American writer Rebecca Otto, who’s working on a project about American suffrage leader Alice Paul. In the US, Alice was instrumental in winning American women the vote (the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution) and launched the still-unfinished fight to add the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. She also spent around 3 years in Britain, where she became involved in the WSPU’s militant suffrage movement.
I’d never heard of Alice Paul, but over the course of six months or so, learnt an awful lot about her. In particular, a night in Glasgow - 20 August, 1909 – when Alice, at 24, staged an unprecedented suffrage protest by climbing onto the roof of St Andrew’s Halls and hiding overnight, with the intention of disrupting a speech by Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Crewe. She failed to execute the protest as planned, as she was spotted by workmen on the neighbouring building - the Mitchell Library. However, she and others in the WSPU were successful in causing a major disturbance, in front of a largely sympathetic crowd of six thousand people gathered on outside where Lord Crewe spoke in the Great Hall.
About St. Andrew’s Halls
St Andrew’s Halls was a very large concert auditorium seating 4,500 people (with two smaller halls also within the building), built in 1877, but almost completely destroyed by fire in 1962. It occupied half the block between Berkeley Street and Kent Road, and faced onto Granville Street, just south of Charing Cross in Glasgow. The Mitchell Library was built on the eastern half of the block between 1907 and 1911. After the 1962 fire, only the facade to Granville Street remained, and the Mitchell was extended to occupy the whole block, incorporating the remaining facade. What most of us are familiar with as the back entrance to the Mitchell Library was actually the front of the building that predates it!
The purpose of the model
My client discovered me on Google, and asked me to research and create a model of St Andrew’s Halls and Mitchell Library, so she could better understand the events of the night in question - where did Alice hide? How did she get there? Where was the workman who spotted her? If her plan had been successful, how would she have accessed the Halls from her position on the roof?
Finding information to make a model
The first part of my commission was to study the original drawings and photos held in the Mitchell Archives. I was shown a collection of photos of the construction process of the Mitchell - absolutely incredible! I also saw copies of the original drawings of the Mitchell. However, unfortunately there was very little of St Andrew’s Halls. By a stroke of luck I came across low resolution images of the drawings on the Canmore website, credited to Bruce Kennedy. A quick Google and I’d tracked him down, a practising Glasgow architect, who had studied the Halls during his time at Glasgow School of Art in the 80’s. He was extremely helpful and enthusiastic for the project, supplying drawings and photos.
But, it can be difficult even with buildings designed now to piece together all the required information for a model, and get those slight variations in drawings to marry up. Taking drawings that were drawn by hand, some nearly 150 years ago, and by different people at different times in different offices, and assuming that they all work together is hopeful at best! Gradually I managed to get a approximation for both buildings that I was confident in.
The finished model
I produced a 1:1000 model of both buildings, having established that by August of 1909, the Mitchell’s exterior was almost totally complete. The photos and records show hoardings around the perimeter of the Mitchell site, as well as two construction huts. Alice told the press that she used two planks as well as construction sheds to access the roofs to the rear of St Andrew’s Halls. Only the ones found in photographs were included in the model. I used the drawings on the elevations of both buildings, and in addition, both buildings can be lifted to reveal a ground floor plan. The floor plan of St. Andrew’s Halls reveals the location of the Great Hall and its proximity to Alice’s likely hiding place on the roof.
This was a really fascinating project to work on, delving into the old drawings and studying photos to try and get the detail correct - almost a forensic approach to model making. Ultimately it was only a small study model, and this was partly so it could be shipped to the US. This proved invaluable as a way to understand the arrangement of the buildings, the relationship of them and the space between. It really showed the benefit of a physical 3D model for a client who doesn’t usually work with architectural drawings, and really helped bring the story alive for her.
In addition to the study model, Rebecca decided to commission a copy of the model for the Mitchell Library’s use, and I am delighted that they plan to have some of my work in their archives!
