There is not a lot of information about John Mair, other than he was a cotton manufacturer who owned the company John Mair & Co and had a counting house on Hutcheson Street, Glasgow.

Messrs Todd & Shortridge were probably the calico-printers and merchants, David, Charles and John Todd, and William Shortridge, of Todd, Shortridge & Co. They were founded in c.1768 and were the first printers to establish a print field in the Vale of Leven, and with a warehouse on the High Street in Glasgow from 1787.

In the eighteenth century Glasgow was expanding to the west across former marshland as the rise of trade in tobacco, sugar and cotton had led to a surge of merchants and industry wanting to settle within the city. A formalised plan for a gridded expansion similar to that of Edinburgh’s New Town was proposed in 1772 and 1781, to designs by James Barry (or Barrie). The latter design was adopted by Glasgow’s Council in 1782 and included a large square named George’s Square (now George Square), after King George III. A house for two families was immediately built on the Square, however, the remainder of the Square developed piecemeal over the following three decades.

In 1792, Robert and James Adam made a group of designs for John Mair, and Todd & Shortridge on the north and south sides of George Square. The designs for John Mair comprised a seven-bay block with two houses flanking a central warehouse and a carriage entrance to the rear. These drawings were dated 22 February 1792, a week before Robert Adam’s death and Adam received £40 from Mair on 25 February along with a letter discussing supervision of the project.

There is one surviving design for Todd & Shortridge, comprising an elevation for a nineteen-bay block on the south side of the square. This drawing is dated 2 November 1792, after Robert’s death, and is attributed to James Adam. Neither of these buildings were executed and the square continued to develop piecemeal into the nineteenth century.

Literature: The Glasgow Directory, 1799, p. 52; A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, Index, 1922, p. 14; F. Irwin, Scottish Eighteenth-Century Chintz and Its Design – I, The Burlington Magazine, Volume 107, September 1965, pp. 452-58 & – II, Volume 107, October 1965, pp. 510-515; M. Sanderson, Robert Adam’s Last Visit to Scotland 1791, Architectural History, Volume 25, 1982, p. 45; Williamson, E. (et. al.), Buildings of Scotland: Glasgow, 1990, p. 104; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 2, 2001, pp. 126, 68, 76

Louisa Catt, 2023