20 C O N T E X T 1 5 0 : J U L Y 2 0 1 7 was endorsed by the council in its 1893 Old Town Improvement Scheme, where Geddes cleared three cavernous Lawnmarket closes of decayed extensions, creating an accessible open court and breathing space for several reconditioned historic buildings and a sensitively designed new arts-and-crafts tenement. His approach turned out to be cheaper and less socially disturbing than the council’s major redevelopment scheme of 1867. Geddes’notion of‘folk planning’led himto try to emulate the Old Town’s celebrated Enlightenment prime, where different social classes lived together. Alongside worker’s housing he encouraged pioneering students and fellow academics to stay there, hoping to involve and evolve the whole community in academia-centred cultural renewal. The first decade of the 20th century witnessed growing concern over the heritage the city had lost, leading to the council adopting an early ‘list’ of architectural and historic buildings. Generous Board (later Department) of Health subsidies through the Housing Act 1919 allowed the city engineer to provide over 100 homes within reconditioned tenements. Within established communities and near workplaces, the small flats were very popular. Later acts transferred cost-burdens to the council, harming complicated acquisition and reconstruction schemes, but the greatest obstacle to reuse was the absence of subsidies for existing buildings (only demolition received funds). Proposed urban reconditioning subsidies, available for rural housing, were omitted from the Housing Act 1935 following landlord lobbying. The HousingAct 1930 moved the emphasis away from general needs to slum clearance housing.Thereafter, in order to secure subsidies for new housing, the council was incited to demolish unfit buildings, of which there were many. After the first world war many private landlords were unable to pay for maintenance following increases in owners’ rates and rent-controls. Unsurprisingly, such policies intensified the demolition of historic buildings, leading to disquiet among Edinburgh’s influential amenity groups, including the long-established Cockburn Association and Old Edinburgh Club. In the mid-1920s the new city architect Ebenezer MacRae resumed conservative surgery. Like Geddes, he was keen to enable people to ‘better themselves’. He restored historic buildings but, for the reasons above, his housing was mostly new-build. In order to ‘harmonise with their surroundings’, his designs were ‘essentially Scottish in character’.2 MacRae carefully inserted new stone-faced housing in the Grassmarket (1928) and rebuilt six tenements on the Canongate (1930). His four-storey housing on the historic building line allowed the council to resist later calls for street-widening. The post-war period saw continuing Geddesian work on the Canongate, with three important council projects involving both careful restoration and new-build, by private architects Robert Hurd and Ian Begg (1953–66). The new infill housing was a lighter, freer interpretation of Scottish character, as were Basil Spence’s (1965–9) modernist blocks 3. As before, open space and gardens replaced congestion. Despite this, the population of the OldTown continued to fall, with continuing dereliction and new demolition instigated by business improvement zoning. Office blocks were uneasily inserted within the city’s topography at St Mary’s Street, Grassmarket and George IV Bridge, and another almost replaced the historic Tron Kirk.4 References 2 Gale, Stanley (1949) Modern Housing Estates. The quotes are from MacRae’s housing architect Malcolm Murchison. 3 Unfortunately set back from the historic building line. 4 The subject of a rare building preservation notice. Nicolson Street, Southside: all the buildings shown here would have been demolished.
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