By the middle of the nineteenth century Glasgow had left every other Scottish town behind. It overtook Edinburgh to become the largest city in Scotland, and its people took to calling it the Second City of the Empire — after London, and ahead of almost everywhere else. The claim was boastful, but it was not empty. The wealth pouring out of the shipyards, engine works, chemical plants and warehouses made Glasgow one of the richest and most productive cities on the planet.

That wealth built the Glasgow the world still recognises. The great Victorian city — the City Chambers on George Square, the terraces of the West End, the parks and galleries, the soaring tenements of honey and red sandstone — is overwhelmingly a creation of these fifty years. So too were the problems that came with breakneck growth: some of the worst slums in Europe, overcrowding, and disease, which the city's reformers spent the era trying, with mixed success, to cure.

It was also an age of firsts. Clean Highland water arrived from Loch Katrine and ended the cholera that had haunted the closes. An underground railway opened beneath the streets. The football clubs that still fill the city's Saturdays were founded. And in an art school and a handful of tea rooms, a young architect named Charles Rennie Mackintosh began developing the design language that would carry Glasgow's name into the twentieth century.

The events of this era

1850 – 1900, in order

  • 1851Glasgow becomes Scotland's largest cityIts population passes Edinburgh's, exceeding 300,000.
  • 1859The Loch Katrine water scheme opensQueen Victoria inaugurates a supply of clean Highland water that ends the cholera era.
  • 1866The City Improvement Trust begins clearing the slumsAn ambitious attempt to demolish the worst of the medieval closes and rebuild.
  • 1867Queen's Park FC is foundedScotland's oldest association football club, and long its most influential.
  • 1870The University moves to GilmorehillGilbert Scott's landmark building rises above the West End.
  • 1872Rangers FC is foundedFormed by a group of young rowing enthusiasts in the West End.
  • 1878The City of Glasgow Bank collapsesA catastrophic failure that ruined thousands of shareholders across Scotland.
  • 1887Celtic FC is foundedEstablished in the East End to raise funds for the poor of the parish.
  • 1888The International Exhibition; the City Chambers completedGlasgow shows itself to the world, and opens its opulent seat of government.
  • 1896The Glasgow Subway opensThe world's third-oldest underground railway begins running beneath the city.

Full pages for each of these events are being written and will be linked here as they are published. In the meantime, you can find them all on the timeline.