The Co-op Building...

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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby the bigman » Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:30 am

Road due to be open Monday or tuesday at the latest :D
on the highway to hell
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby glasgowken » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:22 pm

I wonder how hard they tried to save it.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Fossil » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:43 pm

glasgowken wrote:I wonder how hard they tried to save it.


it was a difficult one GK
The owners of the building had just gone tits up financially. So it was in limbo for a while trying to work out who owned it after that
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby glasgowken » Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:49 pm

Just seems like we're heading back to the bad old days of knock it down, although I wonder if they ever really went away.

It was no great shakes of architecture, but it would be a shame if only the "great" buildings were deemed worth saving while the more run of the mill stuff is left to ruin. It's those that give a city it's structure & character.
I liken it to a car collection which only saves the top end cars while seeing the cheap everyman runner as unimportant.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Targer » Sat Feb 25, 2012 8:41 pm

Its important that we retain/maintain the character of the area. I can think of other similar buildings such as Eglington Toll and Paislet Road Toll that do add to the area and we cannot afford to loose them. No doubt this Co-Op building will be replaced but its important that its foot print and general character/architecture be maintained.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Doug » Wed Apr 17, 2013 2:29 pm

Mori wrote:
fatweegee wrote:My Dad worked in the Funerals Department ther in the '90's. Was only ever in it once though. Can anyone remember the main CWS building across the road being a Hyper-Market?


The original supermarket before Asda and Tesco were ever heard of.

Yep the shoplifters paradise was closed down not long after it opend because of the theft losses not only by the public but by their own staff.


I realize this is an old thread but nevertheless. I cant recall the exact dates but in the early 80's I was the non food manager in the Hypermarket ie I was responsible for all non food operations on 2 levels connected by an escalator on which you could take your trolley to the upper level departments and restaurant. I dont know when it closed down but it certainly didn't make money and was beset with many problems. All the floors above the hypermarket were abandoned but on one occasion a security officer showed me around them and we even (with difficulty due to so much rubbish around) managed to make our way up a very rickety and downright unsafe narrow staircase right to the very top of the iconic clock tower. Great view but very scary, was mightily happy to get back down again in one piece !!
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Delmont St Xavier » Wed Apr 17, 2013 7:40 pm

The iconic clock tower was not in the 95 Morrison Street which was the head office of the original SCWS and latterly the Co-operative Hypermarket...

The clock tower was based in the former Funeral HQ of CWS (119 Paisley Road) it was the side entrance that you entered into that building... sadly it went on fire and whole thing was demolished as is history.... If you climbed that staircase which wasn't narrow or dangerous then I am not sure which building you were in as I worked in the funeral dept for years and used to go over to the staff canteen and bank in 95 Morrison Street with regularity.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Doug » Wed Apr 17, 2013 9:23 pm

Delmont St Xavier wrote:The iconic clock tower was not in the 95 Morrison Street which was the head office of the original SCWS and latterly the Co-operative Hypermarket...

The clock tower was based in the former Funeral HQ of CWS (119 Paisley Road) it was the side entrance that you entered into that building... sadly it went on fire and whole thing was demolished as is history.... If you climbed that staircase which wasn't narrow or dangerous then I am not sure which building you were in as I worked in the funeral dept for years and used to go over to the staff canteen and bank in 95 Morrison Street with regularity.


Thanks for the reply, unfortunately I have to get off to work in a few minutes. I have tried to find the other thread for the SCWS but damned if I can find it now, the one where it shows the coop buildings with little red and yellow dots on them, I'll find it tomorrow. The building the hypermarket was in may not have been No 95 that I cant recall but it most certainly had a tower at the top which had long been condemned and staff were not allowed access to it. I'll reply again tomorrow when I have more time, cheers
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Doug » Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:33 am

Delmont St Xavier wrote:The iconic clock tower was not in the 95 Morrison Street which was the head office of the original SCWS and latterly the Co-operative Hypermarket...

The clock tower was based in the former Funeral HQ of CWS (119 Paisley Road) it was the side entrance that you entered into that building... sadly it went on fire and whole thing was demolished as is history.... If you climbed that staircase which wasn't narrow or dangerous then I am not sure which building you were in as I worked in the funeral dept for years and used to go over to the staff canteen and bank in 95 Morrison Street with regularity.


You are indeed correct and even my wife told me I was mistaken. In looking at the photos I was envisaging where the Hypermarkets car park was and it was not where I thought it was nor was it the clock tower I visited. I remember now it being a round floor to ceiling type window with most of the glass broken and pigeon dropping everywhere, I think that why I felt it being very scary. Thanks for pointing all this out to me.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Delmont St Xavier » Thu Apr 18, 2013 2:45 pm

Doug, hopefully you didn't think I was being pedantic - there is a tower or was a tower type thing on 95 Morrison Street with an angel figure, I can't remember if it is still in place or has been removed due to safety issues. You are right about some of the Co-op buildings around there being totally unsafe when you went 'further up' away from the public areas. The Funeral Home as all furnished with the highest quality of stuff at one time but on the floor above (accounts) it was a basic run of the mill office but above than and beyond the building was worse than derelict.

95 Morrison Street was very much the same the 'working' floors were passable as being for public use, dated and tired but if you went further up outwith the gaze of the public areas - you would have thought the place had been broken into and ransacked. Now there was access to the angel figure, as rumour has it that there was supposed to be a light on the angel in a lantern that could be lit - gaslight possibly?! This building was one of the original designs for the City Chambers but didn't win the competition and so SCWS took the design to be their landmark headquarters when it was the real SCWS. I have a faint recall of entering a spiral type staircase and it being rather unsafe...does that sound right?

Now the building next to 95 which has been refurbished and turned into flats - I am surprised that survived and was able to be turned into anything - did you ever see inside it? Mushrooms, rats, bats, mould, the constant smell of cheese and fungus and all sorts oozing out of the floorboards....
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Doug » Fri Apr 19, 2013 8:11 am

Pedantic, absolutely not. I was delighted when you replied, it's such a long time ago. You mention a spiral staircase. I think you have it exactly and I think that why I found the whole experience sort of scary (although I very much wanted be there) I recall the stairway being spiral because we were going round and round unlike a normal staircase and it was full of bird droppings and so much rubbish we could hardly make our way up then when we got to the top we were on a smallish floor which was really grotty and looked as if it had been abandoned a long time ago. It was from this floor that the window, or whatever it was we looked out of, was situated. Once again many thanks for your replies. Doug.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby crusty_bint » Tue Apr 23, 2013 6:14 pm

the co-op building being a rejected design for the city chambers is myth, the angel was a statue of liberty made of concrete that indeed held a torch, coloured red and lit by electricity, it was removed in the 90s due to safety concerns
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Delmont St Xavier » Tue Apr 23, 2013 9:09 pm

In 1989 on the wall of the corridor along towards the entrance of the canteen, there was a history of the building in photos and documents - it wasn't a large display about 3 or 5 A4 canvass style pieces thrown together and I've just checked with a former colleague who remembers it too. There was a 4 line paragraph about the building being rejected by the then Glasgow Corporation and SCWS snapping it up...

It may well be a myth, I can't evidence it in any way and SCWS may have indeed bought into the myth too. I can only recount what I saw and so did my old colleague who was there I think since they laid the foundation stone!
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby Vinegar Tom » Tue Apr 23, 2013 9:47 pm

I think it is a pretty longstanding myth ( it's certainly repeated in Jack House's Heart of Glasgow ) , but I have been told that it is not true. I would have liked it to be true, and you can see why the myth persisted as it is a pretty grand building.
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Re: The Co-op Building...

Postby babyreecesdaddy » Thu Apr 25, 2013 12:57 pm

As someone living in the building and also someone who has been lucky enough to see every inch of it, including the tower it is a well established fact that it is the runner up for the city chambers.

Part of it's listed building application was based on this fact.
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