The Glasgow Assembly Rooms were built on Ingram Street to designs by Robert and James Adam in 1796 to provide the city with a meeting place for dancing, reading, and other related activity. A local architect, Mr Craig of Glasgow, had made plans for the new Assembly Rooms, but these were considered not to be of the best standard by two of the subscribers, James and Andrew Stirling. The Stirling brothers were part of the renowned Glasgow cloth-printing company William Stirling and Sons. In March 1791, the Adam office’s Edinburgh Clerk of Works, John Paterson, encountered the Stirling brothers, James and Andrew, whilst on a journey from Glasgow. Paterson was already well acquainted with Andrew and visited his premises at Drumpellier to discuss potential Adam office projects in Glasgow, including the Assembly Rooms.

Robert Adam met with the Assembly Rooms Committee in September 1791 with some drawings already made. The funds for the building were raised using the Tontine principle, a form of collective investment based on the principle of survivorship. However, progress was exceedingly slow and the building wasn’t executed until after both Robert and James’s deaths in 1792 and 1794 respectively.

The surviving drawings include a group of unexecuted designs and a preliminary plan and elevation for the executed scheme. The executed designs were published in George Richardson’s New Vitruvius Britannicus in 1802 and attributed to both Robert and James Adam. Bolton suggests these preliminary designs are for Glasgow Trades Hall, possibly by William Adam, and that those published by Richardson are incorrectly attributed. This is considered to be a mistake; the preliminary and published designs show no correlation with the Trades Hall and match the executed Assembly Rooms.

New wings were added to either side of the building in 1807, to designs by Henry Holland. The building was demolished in the early 1890s and the first-floor front comprising the arch and flanking columns were removed to Glasgow Green and re-erected as the McLennan Arch in 1893.

Literature: National Library Scotland: MSS.19992-19993, Letters from John Paterson to Robert Adam, 1790-91; A.T. Bolton, The Architecture of Robert and James Adam, Volume II, 1922, pp. 196-7, Index p. 14; M. Sanderson, 'Robert Adam’s Last Visit to Scotland 1791', Architectural History, Volume 25, 1982, pp. 35-46; A. A. Tait, Robert Adam, The Creative Mind: from the sketch to the finished drawing, 1996, p.48; D. King, The Complete Works of Robert & James Adam and Unbuilt Adam, Volume 1, 2001, pp. 32, 57-9, 413-4, Volume 2, p.55

With thanks to the Arts Society Fund and the Art Fund’s Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant which enabled archival visits in Edinburgh to support research for this scheme.

Louisa Catt, 2023