{"id":264,"date":"2008-12-28T22:52:47","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T22:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/?p=264"},"modified":"2013-11-17T22:30:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:30:50","slug":"1-george-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/high-places\/1-george-square\/","title":{"rendered":"1 George Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

Built in 1878, the A-listed Glasgow Central Post Office was the city’s postal headquarters until 1995; in 1999, it was bought by Stefan King’s G1 leisure group with plans to turn it into a 5-star hotel, but this fell through, and it was sold again in 2005 to partners AWG and HF Developments, for conversion into office space.<\/p>\n

Conversion is now almost complete – the facade has been retained, with a new interior built and a new steel cupola. At present, though, and for the past 8 years, it has been a giant billboard:<\/p>\n

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Allegedly, Mr. King was getting more money in advertising revenue than he would from developing the building, hence the kerfuffle – development did go ahead, though, and this is what it looked like inside in Summer 2007:<\/p>\n

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So, stuffed full of mince pies and vegetarian turkey, I ventured forth to explore something in Glasgow City Centre – and what could be more central than no. 1 George Square?<\/p>\n

The view from the top of the new cupola is absolutely stunning:<\/p>\n

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The view from the penthouse office suites:<\/p>\n

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The cupola is surprisingly small, but has wonderful views both North:<\/p>\n

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And South:<\/p>\n

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Two cranes tower over the site:<\/p>\n

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George Square’s Winterfest in full swing:<\/p>\n

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Inside, a few traces of the old building remain on the walls – I hope they save these tiles:<\/p>\n

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Lower down, though, it’s all new:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Built in 1878, the A-listed Glasgow Central Post Office was the city’s postal headquarters until 1995; in 1999, it was bought by Stefan King’s G1 leisure group with plans to turn it into a 5-star hotel, but this fell through, and it was sold again in 2005 to partners AWG and HF Developments, for conversion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-places"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/3143047473_588f4570c1_z.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3yGoo-4g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1224,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/1224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/catchingphotons.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}