Statues of liberty: Glasgow in stone

Glasgow has a rich Victorian history. You can see it in places such as the astonishing City Chambers, in streets full of old buildings that were dedicated to commerce or the law.

All of them reflected the city's remarkable success, its sense of worth, its swaggering civic self-assurance. As a new book by Adrian Searle and David Barbour reminds you, however, this history can also be seen if you crane your neck a little. What Searle describes as a 'plethora of statues, gargoyles and ornament' is remarkable.

The irony, of course, is that by virtue of its lofty positioning, high up on facades or at roof level, it is very difficult to admire in any detail.

This coffee-table book, entitled Look Up Glasgow: World-class architecture that's hidden in plain sight, does the hard work for you. World-class? Searle is qualified to make such an assertion, not least because he studied history, and the history of art, at university.

In his introduction he talks about how Glasgow, with its arrays of classical figures, mythical colossi, biblical heroes and reliefs and portraits of the great and the good, is unlike any other city in the world. And yes, Glasgow probably does qualify as world-class in this context.

It has enjoyed better fortunes than, for example, Manchester, which, Searle believes, has lost many of its Victorian glories through a chastening combination of town planning, the Luftwaffe and the IRA.

"Manchester has been stripped of much of its Victorian heart," he says.

"A Glaswegian visiting Manchester today will quickly realise that the place makes Glasgow look like a wedding cake."

Over some Earl Grey in a coffee shop in the Merchant City, around the corner from his publishing company (it's based in a former corsetry, one of Glasgow's oldest commercial properties), Searle continues: "Glasgow is such an ebullient city, and its city-centre Victorian architecture is in your face: lavish, energetic, and fantastically exuberant.

"The amount and scale of stuff is frankly bonkers but it is something we can be hugely proud of.

"One of the poignant aspects of the book is the level of craftsmanship that existed in the city, as you can see from the photographs.

"It is also a fascinating insight into just how wealthy Glasgow was.

"As the Second City of the Empire, it would be comparable to a city such as, say, Los Angeles or San Francisco now, in terms of being the second city of a massive global empire.

"It was the kind of place where people were not afraid of conspicuous displays of wealth.

"I hope the book conveys just how successful Glasgow was in the 19th century, and how proud we can be of that heritage in terms of what has been left behind.

"It's also," he adds, "a fantastic lens reflecting on the moral questions of commerce in the 19th century.

"Although slavery was abolished relatively early in the century, at the same time, clearly, you had the tobacco lords such as Dunlop and Glassford.

"The whole economy of Glasgow initially was founded on tobacco and sugar and the West Indies, which was dependent on slave labour.

"The city moved on from this, but it was a very important foundation for the city's economic success, over and above all the other dodgy things the Victorians did in terms of the opium wars and the like.

"On the one hand, empire creates great wealth; on the other, somebody always suffers - whether it's the people working in factories or slaves in distant colonies that are having their resources plundered."

Searle, 45, was born and raised in the north east of Scotland. Between the ages of six and 16 he lived in Larbert, Stirlingshire, and when he went to university it was in Edinburgh.

Throughout it all, Glasgow might have been located near the southern equator as far as he was concerned. Actually, he was more likely to visit the southern equator than to visit Glasgow.

"I inherited a perception of Glasgow being a nasty, scary, smelly place, a post-industrial graveyard," he recalls.

This coloured his view in the 1970s and early 1980s. He visited Glasgow but once - a school trip to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. "I don't remember anything of it other than sitting there, drawing a stuffed fox."

In 1996 he arrived, belatedly, in Glasgow to work on, inter alia, the city's International Festival of Design. Little had prepared him for the shock of the lavish architecture. While everyone else walked with their gaze straight ahead, Searle looked up, and fell in love.

It has taken him a long time to get round to producing this book, but the wait has been worth it.

Even those who think they know Glasgow well will find something new. Alongside the photographs are evocative, specially-commissioned poems by such writers as Colin Begg, Vicki Feaver and Graham Fulton.

The areas covered, too, extend beyond the city centre, to the west end, to Govan, to the east end.

The book - most of the photographs were taken by Barbour, a specialist architectural photographer - depicts dozens of striking sculptures. There's the angel with two pipes, at 520 Sauchiehall Street (originally a piano and organ warehouse); Benno Schotz' severe figures above the Bank of Scotland in the same street; the figures watching the crowds below from their vantage-point high up on the City Chambers; and Demeter, the ancient Greek goddess of the harvest, with a bull, at the Clydeport building in Robertson Street. And the lady with the 'Virginia Woolf hairstyle' (the expression belongs to Vicki Feaver), mentioned at the beginning? You'll find her high up on Kelvingrove museum.

From the Mitchell Library to the old British Linen Bank at 162 Gorbals Street, and Parkhead Public Library at Tollcross Road, the city's unflagging Victorian entrepreneurialism and dauntless sense of civic pride is with us still. You can see why Searle was so struck by what he saw, in 1996.

On my way back to the office I stop and admire the Corinthian, in Ingram Street, with its fetching facade of allegorical female figures; and, minutes later, a number of old buildings in St Vincent Street, all of them cited in Searle and Barbour's book.

You can't stand and stare for too long - people start to give you odd looks - but there is a remarkable story in these figures which have been carved in stone, out of reach today though not quite out of sight.

Look up Glasgow, indeed.

l How many did you recognise? -Turn to page 39 for captions.

Look Up Glasgow, Freight Books, £25. Adrian Searle and Ian R Mitchell, author of A Glasgow Mosaic, will discuss Glasgow's architecture, at the Mitchell Library on November 30. Part of Book Week Scotland, the talk (1.30pm-3pm) has free, ticketed admission. Contact: sarah@saltiresociety. org.uk or call 0141 287 2999