1969: Grand old hotel bites the dust in name of progress

LONG before the bulldozers and the wrecking crews moved in, Glasgow’s Charing Cross was a fashionable area. Says the Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland: “By the 1890s it had become the hub of Glasgow’s West End ... It was distinguished by several fine buildings including the Charing Cross Hotel ... “The hotel had opened in 1878 and was later renamed the Grand.” It lasted until 1968 – an advertisement from that year noted its 100 bedrooms, ballroom, cocktail bar and “spacious lounge” – before closing. It was demolished (above) to permit construction of an inner ring-road, and thus did the city lose another of its ornate old buildings. “Work on this section of the road,” said the Glasgow Herald of February 15, 1969, “is due to start this year and should be finished by the end of 1971.”

There were, incidentally, some interesting memories of the Grand a while ago on the Facebook page of Lost Glasgow, from people who remembered the hotel and regretted its disappearance. One woman wrote of a war-time incident. Her father’s dance band was playing in the Grand when the air-raid sirens went off, and the dancers promptly disappeared. He found them in the basement, singing hymns. He told them: “Folks, if it’s our time to go, I’d rather go dancing and being happy.” That was enough to get them all back upstairs and dancing again.

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