Exterior
The building is in the Beaux arts style, an interpretation of Renaissance Classicism incorporating Italianate styles with a vast range of ornate decoration, used to express the wealth and industrial export-led economic prosperity of the Second City of the Empire. The exterior sculpture, by James Alexander Ewing, included the central Jubilee Pediment as its centrepiece. Although originally intended to feature a figure symbolising Glasgow 'with the Clyde at her feet sending her manufactures to all the world', the Pediment was redesigned to celebrate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. It depicts Victoria enthroned, surrounded by emblematic figures of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, alongside the colonies of the British Empire. Ewing also designed the apex sculptures of Truth, Riches, and Honour, and the statues of The Four Seasons on the Chamber's tower. The central apex figure of Truth is popularly known as Glasgow's Statue of Liberty, because of its close resemblance to the similarly posed, but very much larger, statue in New York harbour.
Read more about this topic: Glasgow City Chambers
Famous quotes containing the word exterior:
“Had I been less resolved to work, I would perhaps had made an effort to begin immediately. But since my resolution was formal and before twenty four hours, in the empty slots of the next day where everything fit so nicely because I was not yet there, it was better not to choose a night at which I was not well-disposed for a debut to which the following days proved, alas, no more propitious.... Unfortunately, the following day was not the exterior and vast day which I had feverishly awaited.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The competent leader of men cares little for the niceties of other peoples’ characters: he cares much—everything—for the exterior uses to which they may be put.... These are men to be moved. How should he move them? He supplies the power; others simply the materials on which that power operates.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Professor Eucalyptus said, “The search
For reality is as momentous as
The search for god.” It is the philosopher’s search
For an interior made exterior
And the poet’s search for the same exterior made
Interior: breathless things broodingly abreath....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)