Robert L. Paterson & Co.

Robert L. Paterson & Co., glaziers in Canning Street and then Clyde (now Abercromby) Street, Glasgow, was named after Robert Leck Paterson (1855–1917). 1 The son of a cotton-yarn dresser, by 1871 he was working as a property factor's clerk in the East End of Glasgow. 2 He had become an 'oil, colour and glass merchant' by 1880, when he married Ann Harkness, his employer's daughter. 3 Paterson took over her father's glazier's and glass merchant's business at 90 Canning Street, Calton, around 1880, when Adam Harkness (c. 1816–1906) retired to Dunoon. 4 Paterson was employing one man and an apprentice in 1881, and advertised as 'R. L. Paterson & Co., oil and colourmen' shortly afterwards. 5 'Colourmen' were specialist hardware merchants, mixing paints and selling oils and pigments for varnish, putty and window-glazing.

In the mid-1880s, Paterson moved to larger premises at the junction of Canning Street (now subsumed by London Road) and Silvergrove Street, Calton, near his house in Monteith Row. 6 The firm worked at the G.S.W.R. Goods Station in the High Street in 1884 and were granted permission to erect tenements in conjunction with contractor John Craig in Whitevale, Cheapside and Warroch Streets in 1891. 7 Paterson applied to build 'two self-contained houses' in Onslow Drive, Dennistoun in 1892. 8 One of these was possibly to be his family home, as the Patersons and their five daughters moved to 'Mayfield', Onslow Drive in 1892–3. 9 Around the same time, the business moved to premises at 42 to 46 Clyde (now Abercromby) Street, Calton. 10

Paterson became a J.P. during the First World War, and was still working when he died in Dennistoun in 1917. 11 After his death, the firm was managed on behalf of his widow, Ann Harkness Paterson, until her death in 1921, and in 1924 it was formally transferred to the ownership of her daughters. 12