As a resident of one of Robert Duncan's beautifully designed homes on Dixon Avenue, I’ve come to appreciate the lasting impact of this overlooked architect. His 21 distinctive houses, with their unique bay windows and ornate details, have given Crosshill its special character and earned it conservation status. Duncan's work is a hidden gem in Glasgow’s architectural heritage.

*West end of Dixon Avenue, Glasgow. © Ailsa Boyd, 2024.*

By Dr Ailsa Boyd

When walking along parts of Dixon Avenue, you might have noticed it’s rather different to the other streets of Govanhill and Crosshill. The area remains very much what it was a hundred years ago, with bustling shops and family homes in the tenements above. But in Dixon Avenue, where I live, there has been no building since 1950, and the terraced houses are set back from the road by gardens.

On the south side of the street, after you walk past the Al-Farooq Mosque, the red and blond sandstone houses have large bay windows, stained glass and ornate cast-iron railings. It is this special character that led the council to create the Crosshill Conservation Area in 1975, and a great deal of it is down to one man, architect Robert Duncan, who lived from 1841-1928.

Duncan is not very well known, but my research has uncovered 95 buildings designed by the architect – villas, tenements, stables, shops, warehouses and churches – across Glasgow, Hamilton, Helensburgh and Kinross-shire. Eight are listed, and some are familiar Glasgow landmarks.

Born in Cardross, Dumbartonshire in 1841, Duncan was the second of five children of Ebenezer Duncan, a master builder. After his father’s death, the family moved to Glasgow, and in 1871, the whole family were living on Victoria Road. Robert, now an architect, stayed with his elder brother Andrew, and his mother was across the road, above what is now the Anarkali restaurant.

Agnes Gemmell lived in the same close, and she married Robert in 1876. They moved to a small flat on Langside Road where they had three boys. By this time he was in partnership with an older architect, John Grahame Peat, designing tenements, workshops and villas in Hamilton.

Peat & Duncan became established in Glasgow through their work for grocers, Cooper & Co. With three shops in Glasgow and premises in 46 other towns across the United Kingdom including London, Coopers were the premier ‘tea, coffee and provision merchants, grocers, manufacturers, and cigar importers’. Between 1885–1891 most of their Glasgow shops, factories, bakeries, sausage works and stables were designed or altered by Duncan.

*Coopers, 499 Great Western Road, Glasgow. © Ailsa Boyd, 2024.*

Coopers was an innovative company, using electric lighting, telephones and delivery vans. Their beautiful shops and cafes were full of tempting foods at economical prices. In 1886, Duncan designed their flagship store on the corner of Great Western Road and Bank Street (now a bar, once again named Coopers). The front door is flanked by huge polished granite pillars, and the four impressive floors are highly decorated in plaster and stone, with balconies, fish-scale roof tiles, and a four-sided clock tower topped with a Greek temple. This is perhaps the most exuberant example of Duncan’s Free Renaissance style.

Taking Classical elements like pediments and columns, Duncan freely combined them with Italianate carved decoration, steep, French mansard roofs, playful little classical temples, and dramatic curved shapes. He also used modern materials: plate-glass, coloured Minton tiles, and columns and balconies in cast iron.

*96-100 Dixon Avenue, Glasgow. © Ailsa Boyd, 2024.*

All this work for Coopers enabled Duncan to start his own building work, and he chose the south side of Dixon Avenue, around the corner from his flat. In 1887, only Dixon Halls and tenements at the Victoria Road end had been built; the rest was empty ground. Duncan built a row of eight villas (No. 92–106) and was determined to make them stand out.

The first thing you notice are the huge bay windows, far rounder than typical Victorian terraces. They are joined in pairs and built of buff sandstone with slate roofs, decorative iron finials and wooden bracketing at the roof line.

Duncan moved into No. 92, and advertised the others in the Glasgow Herald for £700; the typical yearly wage for a professional man. All were sold by April 1891 – to a doctor, grocers, a hardware merchant, property factors, and a missionary. The Battersby family at No. 100 exemplify the social mobility possible in the industrial city of Glasgow. Originally an iron turner, James Battersby, was a ‘shopman chandler’ by 1881, who bought several flats in the Gorbals. Becoming a prosperous landlord, ten years later he purchased a new villa on Dixon Avenue. Of his eight children, six of them – including girls – had a university education and became doctors, lawyers and teachers.

However, the missionary living at No. 96 has a more direct connection to Duncan’s career. John Henderson also owned 98 and 104 Dixon Avenue, renting them out, and in 1895 bought 25 Albert Road East, also built by Duncan. He was Chaplain to the Glasgow Mission for the Deaf and Dumb, which assisted people by providing interpreters, finding employment as well as holding religious services in finger and sign language.

*Former "Institute for Adult Deaf and Dumb", 158 West Regent Street, Glasgow. © Ailsa Boyd, 2024.*

In 1889, they needed a bigger building, and who better to ask than the neighbour of the chaplain? Peat & Duncan were commissioned to prepare plans, and the four storey red sandstone building at 158 West Regent Street in the city centre opened in January 1895.

It has a striking façade, which the Glasgow Herald described as ‘a well-balanced composition in the Italian style’. Above the central door is a carved relief of Christ healing a deaf man, flanked by large hexagonal pilasters and two bay windowed towers. We see Duncan’s favourite rounded and massive forms, but he has also added Scottish Baronial pointed turrets.

Inside, facilities included a gymnasium, reading room, billiard room, and a top-lit hall to seat 600 for lectures and services. All the walls were panelled in wood, with coloured encaustic floor tiles, and ornate wrought iron balustrades on the stairs.

During this time Duncan was busy with several large villas in Pollokshields, and a couple of churches, like 70 Coplaw Street, which is now run as The Ark community centre and sadly missing its original stained glass windows. He also did smaller jobs like workshops in lanes off Cathcart Road and Pollokshaws Road. His last building was a laundry on Battlefield Road in 1906, still standing and the home of Glasgow Floors.

*133-145 Albert Road, Glasgow. © Ailsa Boyd, 2024.*

But it is his houses that really shape the area. In 1895, he built red sandstone tenements on the corner of Cathcart Road and Dixon Road, for workers and families: two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, with shops at street level.

Round the corner is a terrace of six villas, completed in 1896, 133–145 Albert Road East (now Albert Road, next to Holyrood Secondary School). These are smaller than his first Dixon Avenue group, built from textured red sandstone with charming stained glass trefoils above the front door. Again, Duncan moved into one of the houses, and sold the others, to builders, a plumber, a draper, an engineer, a surgeon and clergymen.

Between 1897–1904, he repeated this design, adding dramatic semi-circular bays, on the other houses he built westwards along 42-74 Dixon Avenue. In total, this local architect built 21 houses in just this street, giving a unique character to the whole of Crosshill.

Dr Ailsa Boyd is researching more about Duncan for a book about his architecture, and would welcome information from people who live in houses designed by him. You can find out more on her website: ailsaboyd.wordpress.com