Edited 3/10/13:-
The flickr account I previously linked to in this post has disabled the sharing facility. The set of pictures is still viewable on flickr via this link or for each photo click on the relevant links below.

Re-edited 12/12/16. The pictures have become embeddable again so I have done so.

Original post:-
Various memorabilia were made for the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938; a lot of them containing representations of the Tower of Empire.

The Exhibition’s logo though was, like that of the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924 and 1925, a lion. The Wembley lion was what is heraldically known as statant. Since in 1938 the Exhibition was being held in Scotland the 1938 lion was of course rampant.

Colour images of the 1938 Exhibition are rare but this was what the Empire Exhibition’s entrance gates looked like – complete with lion logo. (Photos below taken from Flickr – though I’d seen them on display at the last Glasgow Worldcon in 2005. A set of coloured photographs of the Exhibition had come to light a year or so previously after having been in a drawer or something for 60+ years.) As always the Tower of Empire is conspicuous in the background.

And there’s a night time view of the entrance taken from much the same angle.

One of the features of the Exhibition was the coloured lights not only on the buildings but also in the fountains and on the Tower.

The zenith of Art Deco (or of Moderne if you must) in Scotland came in 1938 with the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, held in Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, and which opened 75 years ago today on 3/5/1938.

Its signature building was the Tower of Empire (seen in the above photograph taken from the link) designed by Thomas Tait whose houses at Silver End I featured eighteen months ago. The tower was erected on the hill in Bellahouston Park and dominated the Exhibition.

Tait was in overall charge of the architecture for the Exhibition – some of whose buildings made extensive use of the new construction material, asbestos cement! – and designed many of the buildings himself.

My favourite is the Atlantic Restaurant, a ship-shaped building cresting the wave of the hill on which it was set, two postcards of which I reproduce below.

Sadly almost none of the buildings remain. (It was a condition of such events that their locations were restored to their original condition soon afterwards. Moreover shortly afterwards the country was involved in the Second World War and conserving architecture became a minor consideration. The Exhibition itself came to an end in the midst of the Munich Crisis.)

Only the Palace of Arts is still standing in Bellahouston Park itself. It was transformed into a sports pavilion. The Palace of Engineering was taken down and re-erected at Prestwick Airport and can still be found there. The South Africa building was in Dutch Barn style rather than deco or moderne and later became a staff canteen at ICI Ardeer. All the rest were demolished.

Think of what a tourist attraction Tait’s Tower, as it was known, could have been! Glasgow’s answer to Eiffel.

As it is, the main tourist draw in the Park today is the House for an Art Lover built to designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh whose buildings are a sort of bridge between the freer, flowing style of Art Nouveau and the more rigid Art Deco.

You may have noticed that I have added a new category to my list especially for this Exhibition. There is so much more I could, and will, post.

Designed by Weddell and Inglis in 1937, the Beresford was opened to provide hotel accommodation for visitors to The Empire Exhibition of 1938 which was held in Glasgow’€™s Bellahouston Park.

The building is a stunner. A great example of high Art Deco. The present red on the facade may be a teeny bit over the top; I think white Art Deco buildings like this really ought to have pastel colours as highlighters, though it does look more pastelly in the close-up.

You can view the Beresford in its heyday at the Glasgow Story where it looks as if it has been somehow snatched from the streets of New York or Chicago and plumped onto Sauchiehall Street to sit rather like an alien spaceship.

Some more views including an interior shot are on this site.

For a while the Beresford had been converted to accommodation for students of Strathclyde University when it was known as the Baird Hall, at which time parts of the frontage, especially the rounded columns, seem to have been painted in a more restrained mustard colour.
As my Alma Mater (The University, as it still styles itself) is its city rival, I have to say that the chance of staying in the Baird Hall would have been the only reason to attend Strathclyde.

The building was sold on in 2003 and has now been refurbished to form 112 apartments.

Some more of its internal deco elements are on show here and there is also an apartment view.

For a 3D-ish colour sketch look no further.

There are numerous pictures of the Beresford on flickr including some night views.

What an absolute belter of a building.