Historic Houses Series - Glasgow Tenement House

Time for another weekly series. This one's on historic residential buildings around the world that have been transformed into museums, such as 97 Orchard's nearly identical twin in Glasgow, Scotland: a 117 year old tenement building that housed workers -mainly native Scots, it seems, rather than immigrants - during the Industrial Revolution. One of the apartments preserved by the museum was owned for over 50 years by a shorthand typist named Agnes Toward, whose pack-rat habits (she held onto bills, recipes, pamphlets, her grandparents' Victorian furniture, and even homemade jam) offer a snapshot of ordinary life in the early 20th century. The lesson here: leave clutter lying around in your apartment, and it may go on display for all to see in a museum one day.




Built of red and white sandstone, Glasgow tenement houses were typically subdivided into small one or two room "flats," as well as slightly larger ones for the more well-off. For more photos of the Tenement House interior, check out the museum's website.

-posted by Liana Grey