About Botanic Gardens Garage, Glasgow

The building comprises three different sections, all designed by David Valentine Wyllie for Mrs Annie K Kennedy (nee Wilson) between 1896 and 1911. David Valentine Wyllie was a prolific architect who designed both industrial and domestic buildings all over Glasgow, including a number of others in the West End, including terraced villas on Lilybank Gardens in 1892/93, and a tenement on Wilton Street in 1895.

The first part of what was to become the Botanic Garage building complex, built c.1896, was a 2-storey construction, described as a warehouse / store at the end of Vinicombe Lane, behind what was then Hillhead Academy.

In 1903 Wyllie designed and built a 5-storey tenement on Vinicombe Street for Annie Kennedy, followed by another 5-storey tenement, with retail units on the ground floor in 1905. In 1906 Kennedy applied for an ‘˜Extension to Motor Garage/warehouse...' - this is the second phase of the building, which backs onto their recently completed tenement. It is a two-storey building - with a basement and ground floor.

The pedestrian entrance was down an alley to the right hand side of the old school building. Additional toilets and a cloakroom were added to the earlier building at this time. This is the first reference to the fact that the building is purpose built as a Motor Garage - ‘˜The Botanic Motor Garage' - as early as 1906.

The third part of the existing garage; the section with the tiled frontage, replaced the Hillhead Academy building, and was designed in 1911. The present two storey, five bay front building, which has large windows, and is finished in green and white glazed tiles, was added in 1911.

Photographic evidence shows that the purpose built Botanic Gardens Motor Garage was used at least in part for the storage of cars. It thus has a claim to be the earliest multi-storey car park in Britain.

Further historical notes extracted from Historic Scotland's listing submission:

The West End of Glasgow was developed over a very large area in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a suburb of the city with terraces, tenements and villas. The police burgh of Hillhead was among the latest of the West End ventures, a typical mixed use, upmarket Glasgow tenemental suburb comprising large flats interspersed with schools, churches, a private baths club, and a burgh hall.
It is within the context of this densely packed, ‘high-rise’ suburb that the need for a multi-storey car park arose. It was at first assumed that motor cars would be the preserve of the rich and kept off street in ‘motor houses’ which would take the place of mews and stables. However, with the spread of car ownership to the more prosperous Scottish middle classes, secure off street parking became a commercial proposition.

Botanic Gardens Garage is an exceptionally early, little-altered and rare surviving example of a public parking garage. Purpose-built public parking garages that predate the 1920s are extremely rare both nationally and internationally and this example has additional interest in being 2-3 storeys high, making it one of the first multi-storey car parks in Europe.

The garage takes excellent advantage of its sloped site, with a gentle ramped entrance to the basement from Vinicombe Lane, and separate entrances to the ground and first floors from Vinicombe Street itself.
The decorative faience façade (circa 1911) is unusual and one of the first buildings in Glasgow to use this material, although probably taking inspiration from James Miller’s pioneering Anchor Line building (1905-7) in the city centre. The faience tiles were deliberately designed to be eye-catching and would have contrasted sharply with the surrounding sandstone buildings. Faience was a costly, labour-intensive material and detailed production drawings were required for each panel to take account of firing shrinkage. The design of the facade takes inspiration from other transport buildings such as city stabling and contemporary London underground stations. The high quality, innovative and striking design of this block, built only 5 years after the oldest part of the building shows how the business flourished from the start.
The use of ramps to access the basement and first floor of the garage was unusual for the time, and adds to the special interest of the building. The multi-storey car park built by Augustus Perret in Paris in 1905 (believed to be the first in Europe, but now demolished), used hydraulic lifts to access the upper floors and this seems to have been the most usual form of access for car parks in Britain, Europe and the USA until the 1920s. Ramps were not in themselves innovative, as they were commonly used in multi-storey city stable blocks, but, the decision to use ramps in the garage was considered sufficiently unusual at the time for this to be passed down as part of the family history of the garage.

Historical significance

In the early 20th century it was forbidden to keep motor cars parked on the street. This posed a problem for tenement-dwellers who wished to own a car but had no access to off-street parking or stables / mews building that they could convert. The Botanic Gardens garage was built to fill this gap and provided lockable parking spaces for long-term rental.
The first motor car in Scotland was licensed in 1902. The erection of this garage, from 1906 onwards, is an indication of the rapid spread of car ownership among the wealthier members of Glasgow’s middle classes. Botanic Gardens Garage was the first purpose-built public parking garage to open in Glasgow and, given Glasgow’s extreme wealth and enthusiasm for innovation, it could well have been one of the first in Britain. It is believed to be the oldest multi-storey car park surviving in Britain and no earlier surviving examples have yet been identified anywhere else in the world.

A copy of Historic Scotland's listing submission can be downloaded here