Extracts from articles by Lucy Bannerman

(The Herald, April & May 2004)

One Moray Place, a grade A-listed building and the former home of one of the country’s most famous architects, Alexander (Greek) Thomson, is [part] of a nineteenth-century terrace in Strathbungo on Glasgow’s south side.

Famed for his love of the horizontal lines and geometry of Greek architecture, Alexander Thomson moved into the first house of Moray Place in 1861. The terrace, which he designed a couple years previously for a local builder, was described by Henry Russell-Hitchcock, an American historian, as ‘with little question, the finest of all nineteenth-century terraces, both in design and execution, and one of the world’s most superb pieces of design based on Greek precedent.’
Thomson apparently modelled the terrace on the Stoa of Attalos II of Athens circa 150BC.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thomson, famed for his love of classical styles, paid particular attention to the design of his own home, decorating the property with his trademark oriental motifs and cornicing. As well as buildings, Thomson designed doors, stencils, furniture and textiles.