As far as significant contributions by national architects go, some may say the US had Frank Lloyd Wright, the French had Le Corbusier, the Germans had Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Scots had Charles Rennie Mackintosh (CRM) – whom they have come to embrace.

Glasgow is CRM central, though he did have commissions outside of the city center, like The Hill House in Helensburgh.

We are in Glasgow so have visited one of series of tea rooms that were done for a prominent local businesswoman Catherine Cranston.

During a time when women did not yet have the right to vote, she opened a series of tea rooms in the City and she retained CRM and Margaret Macdonald to prepare the design which included plans, furniture, interior design, stencils, light fixtures, cutlery – basically every component of the build.

Needles to say her business acumen and the radically fresh designs worked well together to make the venture a complete sucess during the time period of the temperance movement (alcohol consumption was not completely banned but it was discouraged).

The National Trust for Scotland has restored the entire tea room on Sauchiehall Street which was known as the Original Willow Tea Rooms Building (now known as Mackintosh at the Willow). It opened in October of 1903 (just before the completion of The Hill House) after only a seven month buildout.

Locally it was an immediate success, but did not reach wider architectural recognition until almost two years later.

We may have some bias, but based on the conservative tastes of the time period and the fact that this was only the third building in the entire city of Glasgow (population 750K) to have electric lighting, the design has an originality and freshness that was never seen before.