Eighteenth century , Edinburgh by
James Craig (1768) After the
Act of Union, growing prosperity in Scotland led to a spate of new building, both public and private. The threat of Jacobite insurrection or invasion meant that Scotland also saw more military building than England in this period, relying on the strength of inclined and angled engineered masonry work combined with the ability of earthen toppings that could deflect and absorb artillery fire. This culminated in the construction of
Fort George, near Inverness (1748–69), with its projecting
bastions and
redoubts. Most residences were built as
tenement flats, where, in contrast to contemporary building in England where buildings were divided vertically into different houses, they were divided horizontally, with different occupants sharing a common staircase. The smallest might have only one room, the largest several bedrooms and drawing rooms. This classicism, together with its reputation as a major centre of the
Enlightenment, resulted in the city being nicknamed "The Athens of the North". The
gridiron plan, building forms and the architectural detailing would be copied by many smaller towns, although rendered in locally quarried materials. Despite this building boom, the centralisation of much of the government administration, including the king's works, in London, meant that a number of Scottish architects spent most of all of their careers in England, where they had a major impact on
Georgian architecture.
Colen Campbell was influenced by the Palladian style and has been credited with founding Georgian architecture. Architectural historian
Howard Colvin has speculated that he was associated with James Smith and that Campbell may even have been his pupil.
William Adam, was the foremost architect of his time in Scotland, designing and building numerous country houses and public buildings. Among his best known works are
Hopetoun House near Edinburgh, and
Duff House in
Banff. His individual, exuberant, style was built on the Palladian style, but with
Baroque details inspired by
Vanbrugh and Continental architecture. After his death, his sons Robert and John took on the family business, which included lucrative work for the
Board of Ordnance. Robert emerged as leader of the first phase of the
neo-classical revival in England and Scotland from around 1760 until his death. He rejected the Palladian style as "ponderous" and "disgustful". However, he continued their tradition of drawing inspiration directly from
classical antiquity, influenced by his four-year stay in Europe. Adam's main rival was William Chambers, another Scot, but born in Sweden. He did most of his work in London, with a small number of houses in Scotland. He was appointed architectural tutor to the Prince of Wales, later
George III, and in 1766, with Robert Adam, as Architect to the King. More international in outlook than Adam, he combined Neoclassicism and Palladian conventions and his influence was mediated through his large number of pupils.
Nineteenth century Urban growth and planning , cotton mills and housing for workers on the banks of the River Clyde, founded in 1786 and developed by
Robert Owen from 1800 Vernacular architecture of this period continued to depend on local materials and styles, Often built by groups of friends and family, the homes of the poor were usually of very simple construction. Contemporaries noted that cottages in the Highlands and Islands tended to be cruder, with single rooms, slit windows and earthen floors, often shared by a large family. In contrast many Lowland cottages had distinct rooms and chambers, were clad with plaster or paint and even had glazed windows. Urban settings also included traditional thatched houses, beside the larger, stone and slate roofed town houses of merchants and urban gentry. The other side of growing wealth and planned architecture for the aristocracy and middle classes was the growth of urban sprawl, exemplified by sub-urban tenements like those of the
Gorbals in Glasgow, where overcrowding, lack of sanitation and general poverty contributed to disease, crime, and very low life expediency. The sometimes
utopian concept of the
new town, aimed at improving society through the foundation of architecturally designed communities, was an important part of Scottish thinking from the mid-eighteenth to the twentieth century. In addition to the New Town of Edinburgh these included the complete rebuilding of
Inverary for
John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll by John Adam and Robert Mylne, between 1772 and 1800. From 1800,
Robert Owen's
New Lanark, designed as a self-contained community, combining industry with ordered and improved living conditions, was an important milestone in the historical development of
urban planning. Scotland also produced one of the major figures in urban planning in sociologist
Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), who developed the concept of
conurbation, and discarded the idea of "sweeping clearances" to remove existing housing and the imposition of the
gridiron plan, in favour of "conservative surgery": retaining the best buildings in an area and removing the worst. He put this into practice, purchasing and improving slum tenements in James Court, and in new developments at
Ramsay Garden, Edinburgh.
Gothic Revival , re-built for
Walter Scott, helping to launch the
Scots Baronial revival The Gothic Revival in architecture has been seen as an expression of
Romanticism and according to Alvin Jackson, the Scots baronial style was "a Caledonian reading of the gothic". Some of the earliest evidence of a revival in Gothic architecture is from Scotland.
Inveraray Castle, constructed from 1746 with design input from William Adam displays the incorporation of turrets. These were largely conventional Palladian style houses that incorporated some external features of the Scots baronial style. Robert Adam's houses in this style include
Mellerstain and
Wedderburn in Berwickshire and Seton House in East Lothian, but it is most clearly seen at
Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, remodelled by Adam from 1777. Important for the adoption of the style in the early nineteenth century was
Abbotsford House, the residence the novelist and poet, Sir
Walter Scott. Re-built for him from 1816, it became a model for the modern revival of the baronial style. Common features borrowed from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century houses included
battlemented gateways,
crow-stepped gables, pointed
turrets and
machicolations. The style was popular across Scotland and was applied to many relatively modest dwellings by architects such as
William Burn (1789–1870),
David Bryce (1803–76),
Edward Blore (1787–1879),
Edward Calvert (c. 1847–1914) and
Robert Stodart Lorimer (1864–1929) and in urban contexts, including the building of
Cockburn Street in Edinburgh (from the 1850s) as well as the National
Wallace Monument at Stirling (1859–69). The rebuilding of
Balmoral Castle as a baronial palace and its adoption as a royal retreat from 1855 to 1858 confirmed the popularity of the style. In ecclesiastical architecture, a style with more in common to that in England was adopted. Important figures included
Frederick Thomas Pilkington (1832–98), who developed a new style of church building which accorded with the fashionable
High Gothic, but which adapted it for the worship needs of the
Free Church of Scotland, as at
Barclay Viewforth Church, Edinburgh (1862–64).
Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921), who trained in the office of
George Gilbert Scott in London before returning to Edinburgh, worked mainly on small churches in the 'First Pointed' (or Early English) style that is characteristic of Scott's former assistants. By 1880 his practice was designing some of the most prestigious public and private buildings in Scotland, such as the
Scottish National Portrait Gallery; the Dome of Old College, Medical Faculty and McEwan Hall,
Edinburgh University; the
Central Hotel at
Glasgow Central station, the
Catholic Apostolic Church in Edinburgh and
Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute.
Neoclassicism 's
Caledonia Road Church, Glasgow Neoclassicism continued to be a major style into the nineteenth century.
William Henry Playfair (1790–1857) was the designer of many of Edinburgh's neoclassical landmarks in the New Town. Two of his finest works are the
National Gallery of Scotland and the
Royal Scottish Academy, which are situated in the centre of
Edinburgh. However, the figure most associated with the classical style was
Alexander "Greek" Thomson (1817–75). Working mainly in Glasgow, he turned away from the Gothic style toward that of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, as can be seen in the temple and columns that were part of the
Caledonia Road Church (1856). He also designed a number of churches, local government buildings, and houses. One of his grandest schemes was Daniel Stewart's Hospital, now
Stewart's Melville College, Edinburgh. In 1849, he was commissioned to design the lay-out of the
Pollokshields area of
Glasgow, in what until then had been farmland south of the city centre. Rhind formed a partnership with
Robert Hamilton Paterson (1843–1911) who executed major works for brewers, malters and warehouse-men (for which Edinburgh was a centre), including design of the Abbey, James Calder & Co., Castle, Holyrood, Drybrough's,
Caledonian and Clydesdale Breweries; and also work for
McVitie and Price. The partnership was to execute important projects such as the Queen Victoria Memorial at Liverpool and the Royal Scots War Memorial in
St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh.
New engineering The nineteenth century saw some major engineering projects including
Thomas Telford's stone
Dean Bridge and iron
Craigellachie Bridge. The most important was the
Forth Bridge, a
cantilever railway bridge over the
Firth of Forth in the east of
Scotland, 14 kilometres (9 mi) west of central
Edinburgh. Construction of a
suspension bridge designed by
Thomas Bouch, was stopped after the collapse of another of his works, the
Tay Bridge. The project was taken over by
John Fowler and
Benjamin Baker, who designed a structure that was built by Glasgow-based company
Sir William Arrol & Co. from 1883. It was opened on 4 March 1890, and spans a total length of . It was the first major structure in Britain to be constructed of steel; its contemporary, the
Eiffel Tower was built of
wrought iron. ==Twentieth century to the present==