M267 Design for additions and alterations to 9 Grosvenor Terrace

The design for a billiard-room extension at the rear of 9 Grosvenor Terrace, for Norwegian shipowner and broker Sigurd Røed, was one of several similar rear additions to large terraced houses worked on by Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh, including 12 Clairmont Gardens, 3 Woodside Place and 4 Woodside Place. The new rooms created by these additions served a variety of professional and leisure purposes.

Röed was the business partner of George Stanser McNair, brother of Mackintosh's friend and brother-in-law James Herbert McNair and it may have been through this personal link that Röed commissioned Honeyman, Keppie & Mackintosh. 1

A set of simple drawings for 9 Grosvenor Terrace was submitted to Glasgow Dean of Guild Court for approval in June 1906 and contractor tenders for the work were obtained. However, by August 1907, no work had been carried out and the billiard room remained unbuilt. 2

A two-storey building was proposed on the lane to the S. of the house and was to be connected to it by a single-storey corridor with pitched roof and continuous panels of leaded glazing along its E. side. At ground level, corresponding to the basement of the main house, it appears that no rooms were to be constructed: the space would remain open to the yard/garden. The billiard room would be located on the first floor, corresponding to the ground floor of the house, where, according to the drawings, a dining room and 'smoke room' – rooms in which Röed could entertain his business clients and colleagues – were situated. At the N. side of the room was a 'card recess' with what appears to be fitted seating in niches to either side of a gas fire. This recess is reminiscent of earlier fireplace inglenooks designed by Mackintosh and more generally used in Arts and Crafts houses. The billiard room had its own W.C. off the corridor.

Annotations on the drawings state that the roofs of billiard room and corridor would be covered in lead. Glazed panels in the open timber-truss roof of the billiard room would provide natural lighting: it was otherwise windowless.

A modest addition was also proposed for the main house: above the existing basement-level washhouse there were to be extensions to the kitchen on the ground floor and a dressing room on the first floor. The ceiling and window heights of the kitchen extension appear to follow those of the house, while those of the dressing room appear to be lower. The colouring of the elevation drawings suggests that this extension was also to have a lead-covered roof and roughcast walls.

The three sheets of plans, elevations and sections submitted to Glasgow Dean of Guild Court were not drawn by Mackintosh but were signed by him, and the job-book entry is almost entirely in his hand. This strongly indicates he was the partner responsible for the job, in a supervisory capacity if nothing else. With the possible exception of the 'card recess', the design does not appear to be by Mackintosh. The whole design, particularly the glazed corridor, is closely related to the near contemporary addition at 4 Woodside Place, where Keppie appears to have been in charge. The same draughtsman, with distinctive right-leaning lettering, drew up the plans for both projects.

Why the work was not carried through is not known. The work tendered in the job-book entry amounted to over £950, which did not include interior painting, fittings, furnishings or the billiard table and equipment. On 3 May 1907 Röed paid the practice £21 presumably to cover the cost of the design work and contractor tendering process. 3

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