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Summary

Description

John James Burnet (Burnet, Son and Campbell), 1886, 1893, 1908. English collegiate Gothic style former students' union building. Rectangular-plan around a central covered courtyard. 2-storey with 3-stage NW tower. Squared and snecked stugged sandstone; polished ashlar dressings and window mullions.

MAIN HALL at E end (1886) oriented S-N. 2 x 6 bays 2 and 4-light windows with stone mullions and transoms; plate tracery with cusping to upper windows at SE and N, cusping to smaller windows. Gables to N, SE, and S (1903), latter with stack; canted bay with stepping above 1st floor to S elevation; bellcote over S end. ELEVATION TO UNIVERSITY AVENUE: 1886 continuous in design with hall. 9 bays arranged 5-2-2. Central 5-bay range linking tower to hall; 4-light stone mullioned and transomed windows at ground floor, tripartite windows above; 3-stage squat tower, to left elliptically arched entrance with relief panels over, 2 plain tripartite windows to right; 2 tripartite cusped windows with raked cills above, 1st floor single central bipartite window. 2 x 2-bay gatekeeper's lodge at NW corner with irregular fenestration of varying sizes; dormer, crow-stepped gable to University Avenue. Elliptically-headed entrance with panelled timber door to left. Arched carriage entrance with elliptical central entry flanked by pedestrian arches, stepped parapet. ELEVATION TO W RETURN: 1893. 2-2-2 bays; 2 S bays projecting, central 2-bay outshot; tripartite and bipartite windows. ELEVATION TO S: 1908 5-bay section linked to main hall. Tall 15-light windows to ground floor, small 4-light windows to 2nd floor; arched entrance to SE.

INTERIOR (seen 2010): Numerous original details including decorative plasterwork, timber panelling and stair balustrades, stained and leaded glass, open braced timber roof structures.

Statement of Special Interest

John MacIntyre Building is part of an A-Group with McMillan Reading Room, Gatepiers, Railings, Quincentenary Gates, Hunter Memorial, Pearce Lodge, Thomson Building, James Watt Building, Gilbert Scott Buildings and Lord Kelvin's Sundial.

See separate list descriptions for the adjoining boundary railings, gatepiers and Quincentenary Gates, and also nearby buildings enclosed by the railings, including the Gilbert Scott Building, The Square, Thomson Building, Bower Building, Pearce Lodge, Lord Kelvin's Sundial and Hunter Memorial.

The former Student's Union is an early example of the influential 'Low Look' style in a public building by one of Scotland's premier architects, John James Burnet. This unusual style of long, low ranges with squat pyramid-roofed towers was characteristic of the Burnet practice in the late 1880s and 1890s.

John James Burnet was one of Scotland's leading architects in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Son of another architect, John Burnet Senior, he trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Burnet was a pioneer of the stylistic move from historicist styles to a tradition-based, but free-style architecture. He developed enormously successful and influential practices in Glasgow and London, designing a number of eminent buildings including the Fine Art Institute, Athenaeum Theatre, Charing Cross Mansions, Atlantic Chambers and Clyde Navigation Trust Offices in Glasgow and the Kodak Building, the second and third phases of Selfridges, Adelaide House, and the King Edward VII Wing at the British Museum in London. Burnet was knighted for the latter project in 1914. Commissions for the University of Glasgow included: the Bower Building (1900), Anatomical (Thomson) Building (1900-01), James Watt Engineering North Building (1901 and 1908), University Chapel (1923-29), Zoology Building (1923), and Hunter Memorial (1925). The neighbouring Glasgow Western Infirmary also employed Burnet Sr and John James Burnet for a number of projects.

The building is named after Dr John McIntyre, who gifted £5000 in memory of his wife, Ann, towards the construction of a new students' union. The building remained in use as the men's union until 1930, when the current Glasgow University Union building was opened at the corner of University Avenue. In 1932 the Queen Margaret Union moved to the John McIntyre Building. Since 1969, when a new Queen Margaret Union building was constructed in University Gardens, the McIntyre Building has been used as the headquarters of the Student Representative Council.

Formerly listed as '3 Gilmorehill, University of Glasgow, John MacIntyre Building, University Avenue, former Students' Union'.

List description updated as part of review of the University of Glasgow Hillhead Campus, 2011. The building number is derived from the University of Glasgow Main Campus Map (2007), as published on the University's website www.gla.ac.uk.

References

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