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Arcades for Lucknow: Patrick Geddes, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Reconstruction of the City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Volker M. Welter
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Extract

In 1991 two previously undocumented façade designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for a shop and office block and a warehouse block, both in an arcaded street, were auctioned (Figs 1 and 2). These drawings have been related to Patrick Geddes’ town-planning work in India after 1914, yet the background of the designs has remained unexamined. The available evidence presented in this essay allows one to argue that Mackintosh conceived both blocks for the city of Lucknow. They were ideal designs which responded to Geddes’ criticism of Lucknow’s Victoria Street. This street symbolized a type of destructive urban planning whose rectification demanded exemplary architectural and urban design efforts. Required was ‘reconstruction towards Arts and Crafts’ which meant for Geddes and his circle of friends to recreate the city as a, indeed the most, human form of life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 42 , 1999 , pp. 316 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1999

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References

Notes

1 Robertson, Pamela, ‘The unknown Mackintosh’, Christie’s International Magazine, 8 (1991), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar.

2 Helland, Janice, The Studios of Frances and Margaret Macdonald (Manchester, 1996), p. 30 Google Scholar.

3 See for example two undated letters by Margaret Macdonald to Anna Geddes addressing ‘Toshie’s’ state of health and a possible stay of the Geddes’ son Alistair with the Mackintoshes. (First letter c. 1913 (SUA, T-GED 9/2175), second letter between 1906 and 1914 (SUA, T-GED 9/2174)).

4 Geddes, Patrick, Aesthetics, annotated typescript, not dated (c. 1899), p. 4 Google Scholar (SUA, T-GED 5/3/70). See Kitchen, Paddy, A most unsettling person — An Introduction to the Ideas and Life of Patrick Geddes (London, 1975), p. 149 Google Scholar.

5 List of members of the Glasgow branch of the IAASAE, typescript with manuscript additions (SUA, T-GED 6/6/5). Lecture programmes of International Assembly Glasgow 1901 (SUA, T-GED 6/7/4). Invitation card for reception on 11 September 1901 (SUA, T-GED 6/6/5).

6 Letter from Margaret Macdonald to Anna Geddes, c. 1906-14 (SUA, T-GED 9/2175).

7 Geddes, Patrick, Cities in Evolution. An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and the Study of Civics (London, 1915), p. 186 Google Scholar.

8 Margaret Macdonald to Anna Geddes, 14 January 1915 (NLS, MS 10582, fol. 16, my emphasis).

9 Letter from Charles Rennie Mackintosh to William Davidson, 1915 (Coll. Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Mackintosh Collection). See also: C. R. Mackintosh Architectural Drawings, ed. by Robertson, Pamela, catalogue of an exhibition at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, 1990, p. 28 Google Scholar.

10 For Geddes’ work and activities in India see Tyrwhitt, Jaqueline, Patrick Geddes in India (London, 1947)Google Scholar; Ferrara, Giovanni, Rieducazione alla Speranza. Patrick Geddes Planner in India, 1914-1924 (Milan, 1998)Google Scholar. Meller, Helen, ‘Geddes and his Indian Reports’, in Patrick Geddes. A Symposium 1 March 1982, ed. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art/University of Dundee (Dundee, 1982)Google Scholar; Meller, Helen, Patrick Geddes Social Evolutionist and City Planner (London, 1990)Google Scholar.

11 Boardman, Philip, The Worlds of Patrick Geddes, Biologist, Town Planner, Re-educator, Peace-warrior (London, 1978), p. 244 Google Scholar.

12 Welter, Volker M., ‘Stages of an Exhibition. The Cities and Town Planning Exhibition of Patrick Geddes’, Planning History, 20 (1998), No. 1, pp. 25–35 Google Scholar.

13 Letter by Patrick Geddes to anonymous, 7 January 1915, NLS, MS 10515, fols 1-5 (fol. 1, fols 2-3).

14 Geddes, Patrick, ‘The Temple Cities’, in The Outlook Tower: Essays on urbanization in memory of Patrick Geddes, ed. by Ferreira, J. V. and Jha, S. S. (Bombay, 1976), pp. 461–75 Google Scholar (p. 463).

15 The following section on Lucknow relies strongly on Oldenbourg, Veena Taiwar, The Making of Colonial Lucknow 1816-1877 (Princeton, 1984), pp. 30–42 Google Scholar.

16 Oldenbourg, op. cit., p. 31.

17 Geddes, Patrick, Town Planning at Pattala State and City. A Report to H. H. the Maharaja of Pattala (Lucknow, 1922), p. 18 Google Scholar.

18 Geddes, Patrick, Town Planning in Lucknow. A Report to the Municipal Council (Lucknow, 1916)Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., column 6, in special situations Geddes envisaged the arcades 13-14 feet deep (column 8).

20 Ibid., column 7.

21 Ibid.

22 Gunj (Sanskrit) means grain market or quarter.

23 Letter by Philip Mairet to W. A. M. Grigor, BBC, London, 2 March 1967 (Coll. Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Mackintosh Collection [ED3.]). See also: Moffat, Alistair, Remembering Charles Rennie Mackintosh: An illustrated Biography (Lanark, 1989), p. 93 Google Scholar.

24 There was an attempt, probably helped by Geddes, to organize work for Mackintosh in India. Shortly after the summer meeting Mackintosh wrote to William Davidson about an offer from the Indian Government to go out to India ‘to do some work in reconstruction schemes’ (letter from Charles Rennie Mackintosh to William Davidson, 5 August 1915 (Coll. Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Mackintosh Collection)). See also: Robertson, ‘The unknown Mackintosh’, p. 9 (see note 1).

25 Lanchester was a friend of Geddes. After he had become town-planning officer in Madras and set up a private office in Lucknow in 1915, he and Geddes occasionally collaborated on town-planning work.

26 In 1913 the art historian Ernest Havell organized a petition to the Secretary of State for India demanding that the new capital should be built by Indian craftsmen in order to halt the further decline of the native architectural and artistic traditions. The petition was supported for example by C. R. Ashbee, W. Crane, A. K. Coomaraswamy, J. H. Lorimer, and G. B. Shaw, but interestingly, the signatures of Geddes and Lanchester, who had served on a commission preparing the decision for the new capital, are missing ( Havell, E. B., Indian Architecture (London, 1913)Google Scholar, appendix).

27 Syllabus and Time-Table of Summer Meeting at King’s College, Strand, 12-31 July 1915 on ’The War: Its Social Tasks & Problems’ (SUA, T-GED 3/12/18).

28 Geddes, Patrick, Slater, Gilbert, Ideas at War (London, 1915)Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., pp. 178-79.

30 Ibid., pp. 59-60.

31 Ibid., p. 206.

32 Ibid., p. 206.

33 Ibid., p. 210.

34 Ibid., p. 208.

35 Ibid., p. 194.

36 Ibid., p. 212.

37 Ibid., p. 220.

38 No information has been found to date about the participants of the meeting.

39 Summer Meeting — King’s College, Strand, manuscript by Victor Verasis Branford, not dated, p. 4 (SUA, T-GED 12/1/184).

40 Geddes, Slater, op. cit., p. 211.

41 For the history of the exhibit and illustrations of the surviving panel see Robertson, Pamela, ‘The Making of a Painter’, in Charles Rennie Mackintosh, ed. by Kaplan, Wendy (New York, 1996), pp. 291–318 (pp. 306-07)Google Scholar; see also Heiland, op. cit., pp. 175-82; Neat, Timothy, Part Seen, Part Imagined. Meaning and Symbolism in the Work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald (Edinburgh, 1994), pp. 144-48Google Scholar.

42 Charles Rennie Mackintosh, ‘Seemliness’ (1902), G15 (Coll. Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Mackintosh Collection). See also: Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Architectural Papers, ed. by Robertson, Pamela (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990), pp. 220-25Google Scholar (p. 224).

43 The stepped recesses of the memorial fountain are stylistically close to the fire-surround in the hall of the house at 78 Derngate, Northampton, which Mackintosh recast for the model-maker Bassett-Lowke in 1916-17. Geddes was acquainted with Bassett-Lowke and included photographs of models by him for large-scale planning schemes in the Cities and Town Planning Exhibition. The weeping female figures on the pillars at the corners of the war memorial remind one of the crying females in the panel ‘The opera of the Sea’, part of Voices in the Wood.

44 Three designs for street standards, likewise presumably from 1915-16, complete the small group of designs for urban design proposals that Mackintosh produced for Geddes. One of the standards shows six chevron shapes (leaves?), which appear also on a wall of the Dug-Out, an additional room at the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow (1916-17). This room also contained a memorial fireplace dedicated to the dead of the First World War. For the history of these drawings see McGrath, James S., ‘Mackintosh drawings at the University of Strathclyde’, in Newsletter, Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, No. 50, Winter 1988-89, pp. 9–11 Google Scholar. See also Martin Bailey, ‘Bizarre Indian Bazaar Memorial’, Observer, 1 July 1990.

45 Postcard by Fernando Agnoletti to Patrick Geddes, 8 June 1910 (SUA, T-GED 9/1933A).