whose tenement house?
[This opinion piece was originally written in 2018, as part of a student initiative at the University of Glasgow. I am publishing it again in a time where having a safe home feels more significant than ever.]
It’s a (miraculous) sunny Wednesday morning in August, and I am meeting my friend at St George’s Cross station. Together, we head East, crossing the pedestrian bridge arching above the busy M8. Our destination: Buccleuch Street. Over the last four years, I’ve walked the streets of this city back and forth, moved five times, visited dozens of student flats in the most humid corners of my neighbourhood, and taken a myriad of pictures of the characteristic Glaswegian building facades. And yet! It has taken me all this time to set foot in the Tenement House.
Before I begin the tale of my latest Glaswegian discovery, let me set some definitions straight. The Scotland Tenement Act of 2004 defines a tenement as a “traditional sandstone [building] of between 2 and 5 storeys in height constructed between 1840 and 1920, found within the city centre and the original former burghs annexed by Glasgow in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” A tenement can refer to the building as a whole; a tenement house, however, is specifically a flat within a building.
The Tenement House is a museum about the tenements that make up the architectural landscape of many Glaswegian boroughs. It’s a slice of the 1920s neatly conserved in a period-appropriate tenement flat; a personal collection of objects, former property of hand typist Miss Agnes Toward, now in the hands of the National Trust. As you walk in on the ground floor, there is a small exhibition providing insight on the living conditions of the people of Glasgow in Miss Toward’s time. How the tenement buildings were built, who lived in them, who was Miss Toward, and what kind of life did she lead. Spoiler alert: it was a quiet existence. The few rooms on the ground floor set a context for the real show that takes place upstairs, on the first floor.
It smells of gas as you walk into the square and spacious hallway. The traditional gas lamps are lit, and yet it’s a little dark, even in full day light. On one side, the kitchen and bathroom, on the other, the living room and bedroom. It’s a classic Glasgow city flat layout. The bathroom is long and narrow, with bathtub, sink and toilets lined up on the right, and the walls are bordered with wooden panels. I’ve seen this bathroom before, coated with white or pastel paint for a slightly more modern look. In the kitchen, I also recognise the wooden drying racks hissed high under the ceiling thanks to a robust cord mechanism. I used to have the same system, in my flat on Otago Street. And there, in one corner of the room, there’s even the same rectangular nook, in which my former flatmates and I had put our dining table. Except in this instance, a double bed is lodged there. The tour guides explain that this was a pretty common sight. Large families lived in these one-bedroom flats, so of course extra bedding was necessary; the kitchen was a good candidate for a sleeping nook, because it was always warm. The living room also has one, except it looks more like a cupboard, with its door for ‘privacy’. How handy. Otherwise, the lounge has fairly standard features. Fireplace? Check. Bay window? Check. High ceilings with a rose and other fancy fixtures? Check and check. As for the bedroom, it fits the same bill.
I look around the flat, and what strikes me most is that, furniture and wallpaper aside, this space isn’t much different from other modern-day tenements I’ve seen in my student neighbourhood. Well, I suppose time has brought technology, and with it some updates, in theory. Electricity and safe gas, separate bedrooms for everyone – all things we now have good reasons to call common necessities. Except. Not so long ago two friends of mine lived in a flat in Ibrox that didn’t have gas, so their heating was comprised of two electric radiators and the warmth of the kitchen hob. I used to rent a flat that had a top-up meter for gas and electricity. Run out of credit, run out money, and you’ll watch the entire flat shut down. At the time, none of us are from the UK and therefore haven’t built credit yet. So when we try to get a monthly meter put in place: access denied. As for separate bedrooms? I’ll admit that, apart from the occasional couple sharing a room, these are most often granted. But living rooms aren’t. In the West End at least, it’s more profitable to turn a two-bedroom flat with lounge and kitchen into a three bedroom with a sofa dumped in a corner of the dining kitchen. We look at these cupboards suited for double beds, and we ask ourselves: How strange, that people lived like this. Sleeping in the living room? Isn’t that insane?
The parallel might sound silly, but it doesn't just stop there. When the age of the tenements began, one company would build and own an entire block of buildings. From the start, this set up a power imbalance between offer and demand, landlords and tenants. Aided by the industrial rush, landlords had close to no problem filling their properties with tenants, cramming large families into two-bedroom flats, so they barely troubled themselves with embellishing the tenements houses. This led to a quick degradation of people’s living conditions, as necessary property repairs caused by wear and tear weren’t carried out. But with numerous working families in need of places to stay and lacking the buying power to acquire property, the overall quality of the tenements made no difference. The renting market was to property owners what a twenty years of age carpet is to dust mites; a gold mine.
Now you might think we have moved past this, as the concept of ‘climbing the property ladder’ is one of the building blocks of the successful middle-class British story. But going back to the portrait of modern-day Glasgow, I see more of a nuance in shade than an actual contrast in colour. Who doesn't know the urban legend of the Glasgow millionaires? The privileged few who own close to entire blocks in the city and drive around in their roaring convertibles on sunny days. My former landlord was one of them, and me, my flatmate, and our single-glazed, lightly wooden-framed windows never caught sight of him. There is still only a minority of landlords, who have no trouble renting out their flats from year to year, and landlords who don’t carry out heavy refurbishment works even when the property is falling apart. There is still a large demand, with the number of West End residents in Glasgow increasing every year that the University of Glasgow gains a rank in the League Tables. And there are still people in need of a roof over their head, who will pay what it takes to get it, regardless of the condition of the property.
The comparison doesn’t stop there. The facades of tenement buildings are physical reminders of the class stratification of the 1920s. Pick up on specific features and you will guess the type of people who used to live in your block. Stain glass windows in the common staircase or on bay windows were a sign of wealth. As for these building corridors covered in tiles that might remind you of old-fashioned subway stations, they’re basically a physical representation of the social hierarchy. Coloured tiles covering the walls from top to bottom mean upper middle class. Tiles covering about two-thirds of the walls in the staircase scream middle class. Half of the wall covered or no tiles at all signify a working class building.
Today, it’s no longer about tiles, but about window frames, as I briefly mentioned above. An entire building with double-glazed PVC windows and a well-kept facade is probably owned by families and rented by professionals. The wealth of the occupier is reflected on their windowpanes. Single glazing and paint chipping off the window frames in the middle of the Woodlands area hint at HMO rentals. Also spotted on the occasion is a flat with large cracks in the facade and windows held up by wooden poles. That one makes you angry and a little sad, because the building barely stands upright, but in the West End, you can still bet someone is paying £400 a month to rent a miserable room inside.
This might sound disproportionate to some. Overall living conditions have improved, so these issues may seem like privileged complaints. And I’ll grant it: despite these strange echoes of the 20s, we all manage to live decently; and yes, most of us students only stay in rentals two to three years on average. But this doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. Particularly since, despite having focused on the West End and my student reality in this essay, much more remains to be said about the quality of life in other areas of Glasgow further out East or South. In fact, in light of the technological advances of our time, the fact that a century has passed and that the most developed parts of Glasgow continue facing the same unchanged challenges is worrying. It is the sign of a renting crisis on a local scale, and of a much broader social crisis putting the most vulnerable at risk too. Just like living conditions quickly decayed in the 1920s, today’s Glasgow isn't exactly looking pretty. Around Charing Cross and Garnethill, streets harbour properties which clearly used to be high-end, upper class tenements. Close to St-George's Cross subway station, the Queens Crescent nests a private square, and looking at the street's architectural style, it was intended to be a rich area. But as you continue walking towards the M8, on the very way to the Tenement House I mentioned earlier, buildings in which people still live start to look more and more like urban ruins. The windows are paper thin, and the features that gave cachet to the sandstone are often falling to pieces. Looking at these buildings, it’s hard not to think that these flats will soon be beyond repair.
So perhaps the issue lies in how much money the city and its landlords can inject in their properties. But having seen rents rise from an average of £350 to £450 per person per month in the last three years, I remain dubious. I have first-hand experience of living right under a leaked roof, inheriting back problems from my spring mattress which sometimes left bruises on my skin, and living in a room where the window did not properly fit its frame, allowing freezing wind to sneak in during the winter. And yet - I have always been fairly lucky in my flat hunting endeavours. If I love the charming high ceilings and bay windows which allowed me to soak in some much-needed sunlight during the winter, I resent that the tenements have not been kept in better conditions.
In comparison to dreamy, well-kept Edinburgh, Glasgow is perceived to be dirty and rough. It's the people and their spirit that 'make' Glasgow. The endless walks through the wet Glaswegian streets have taught me otherwise. Of course, Glasgow has its own kind of magic. Glasgow has green paths and a riverfront. Glasgow has cathedrals and a social heritage written all over its cityscape. Ask anyone who has seen Glasgow on a sunny day in May, and they will tell you it is a sight to see, with its patchwork of architecture from all ages. Glaswegians are creative, they're welcoming, smart and conscious. They have initiative. They make you want to build a home right where they are. But if the people make Glasgow, why are they left dwelling in the same mess for decades, which are slowly stretching into hundreds of years? The Tenement House has been kept in an impeccable condition for a century and has succeeded in preserving this city's history and culture. So, I guess what it's left me asking is - what about our tenement houses?