Co-operative House (Glasgow)

 apartment building  Add category

Built in 1886-1893 as the headquarters of the Scottish Co-Operative & Wholesale Society. If things had turned out differently this building could have been standing in George Square as it was one of the rejected proposals for the City Chambers. So the design was instead recycled and given to the Co-Op instead.

The building was a combined warehouse and office complex, designed in elaborate French Renaissance style, and is a great monument to just how powerful an organisation the Co-Op was in Victorian times.

In the mid 1970s, seeking to take advantage of its new-found accessibility thanks to the building of the M8, it was converted into a giant Co-Op Hypermarket – there was even a neon sign on the rear with a massive digital clock (very novel at the time) to announce its whereabouts to passing drivers on the Kingston Bridge.

In 1990s, with all danger of the Ring Road ever being completed as good as gone, the Co-Op sold it to developers, who converted into flats and studio space, building an uber-modern glass encrusted extension onto the back.

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