Why Is Kelvingrove Built ‘Back to Front’?

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is not actually built back to front, despite one of Glasgow’s most enduring myths. The story goes that the building was put up the wrong way round, and that the architect, on realising his mistake, leapt to his death from one of the towers. In truth, the grand entrance was always meant to face into Kelvingrove Park, and no architect jumped. The confusion arises only because most visitors today arrive from the other side.

The myth

It is a tale every Glaswegian seems to know. Kelvingrove, so the story runs, was built facing the wrong way, and when the architect saw that his magnificent museum had its back to the main road, he was so overcome that he climbed a tower and jumped. It is a wonderfully dramatic piece of city folklore, and it is completely untrue.

The truth

The rules of the original design competition actually required that the main front and entrance should face north, into Kelvingrove Park, and not south towards the road. That is exactly what was built. The museum is so symmetrical that both ends are grand, and you can walk in from either. People think it is reversed simply because the entrance most of them use now opens onto Argyle Street, at what feels like the back. As for the architects, Sir John W. Simpson and E.J. Milner Allen, both lived long and successful careers and died of natural causes. Our pages on Glasgow’s buildings and architecture tell more of the real story.

A palace built for an exhibition

Kelvingrove opened in 1901 as the Palace of Fine Arts for the great Glasgow International Exhibition of that year, paid for in part by the profits of an earlier exhibition in 1888. It was built in a Spanish Baroque style from warm red sandstone, and Simpson, its senior architect, would later design the original Wembley Stadium. It quickly became one of the best-loved parts of Glasgow’s culture.

Why the myth persists

The legend survives for the simplest of reasons: it is a better story than the truth. The splendour of the park front, the everyday entrance at the ‘back’, and a healthy dose of Glasgow humour keep it alive. The Kelvingrove is also home to a room devoted to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, well worth seeking out whichever door you come in by. Its walls also hold many of the finest works of the Glasgow Boys.