I lived in Dundee from 1993 to 1995. Scary to think that's now more than a quarter of a century ago. I try to get up to the old city at least a couple of times a year and with Nicole now doing a Masters course at my alma mater Abertay University (albeit based mainly at home, for now), I piggybacked on a trip she was undertaking in order to sort out a few academic affairs. We parked near the waterfront and wandered into the city centre. We had planned a visit to the main museum - known as the McManus Galleries - and I headed inside while she popped around the corner to the university library.
Opened in 1867 as the Albert Institute for Literature, Science and Art, the building is designed in the Victorian High Gothic Style as a tribute to Prince Albert who had died prematurely in 1861. An imposing statue of Queen Victoria stands outside. Three stages of construction were required and everything was fully operational by 1889. The name was changed to The McManus in 1984 in honour of the late town Provost and a major refurbishment took place between 2006 and 2009, bringing the facility into the 21st century. The extensive range of galleries showcase paintings, natural history, science and industry as well as telling the story of Dundee and its people. Temporary exhibitions are housed upstairs and there were a couple of installations I particularly wanted to see today. But first I wandered around the ground floor. I've been to the McManus many times over the years and and I'm familiar with the permanent displays such as the Natural History gallery with the ancient log boat and the rooms telling the tale of Dundee's industrial development. That said, it's good to go back and spot things you maybe overlooked last time around and museums don't ever completely stand still. I strolled into a hall containing locally-themed artwork. My eye was caught by a painting by an unknown artist, illustrating the hillside City of Dundee circa early 1800s from the perspective of a boat approaching the harbour. All the major landmarks of the time were present but the painter had apparently struggled with proportion and certain objects were larger or smaller than they ought to have been. This produced a quirky effect, perhaps the actual intention? Either way, I would probably never have noticed the discrepancies in scale if I hadn't been informed. From more recent times, a photo of the Dundee Royal Arch prior to demolition proved a most interesting subject. Commissioned to commemorate a visit from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1844, the stone gateway was erected between 1849 and 1853 to replace a wooden structure that had been in place for the royal visit. The architect was John Thomas Rochead, who also designed the famous Wallace Monument near Stirling. He wasn't paid for that creation as the funding dried up before the tower was completed. Hopefully he demanded his fee in advance from the Dundee authorities. The arch stood until 1964 when it was demolished to make way for the approach road to the planned Tay Road Bridge. By this time the edifice was stained black by decades of industrial pollution and was used as a public toilet by the pigeon population. The dynamited rubble was unceremoniously dumped into a disused dock to create a foundation for the new bridge. A sad end for an iconic structure that had greeted visitors for over a century.
While it's tempting to label the removal of the Royal Arch as a public disgrace, the argument must be placed within the context of the times. It was in a dilapidated state and also represented a throwback to the past. The post-war period ushered in massively improved prospects and living conditions for ordinary working people, not to mention universal health care and hitherto unknown educational opportunities. The Victorian period had associations with widespread poverty and rigid class barriers. Then there's the issue of what was replacing the arch. Car ownership was booming and being able to drive across the estuary in minutes rather than make cumbersome arrangements to be transported by ferry must have been a compelling option. The decision was taken to consign the arch to history and the only remaining traces are a few stone fragments discovered during the waterfront regeneration project and parts of the foundations. A comeback of sorts occurred in 2016 when the People’s Tower Project invited citizens to help create a replica of the arch in Slessor Gardens using 1200 cardboard boxes bound together with masking tape.
Back in the gallery, another painting I admired was an 1853 scene from Newport on the Fife side of the Tay estuary. Henry Duguid created the canvas from a quick sketch he had made on the spot while walking along the river bank. Dudhope Castle is prominent on the lower slopes of the Law and the painting is a rare example of rapidly developing city's landscape before sweeping changes were made in 1871.
The Scotch Fair by Alexander George Fraser is a composite oil painting from 1834. Set in old St Andrews, a couple of landmarks from other Fife villages appear in the lively scene viz the parish church of St Monans and the Culross Mercat Cross. I met up with Nicole and we looked at the stuffed birds in the Natural History section before exiting on to Reform Street to check out a new addition to the Dundee food scene - German Doner Kebab.
The restaurant chain opened its first outlet in Berlin back in 1989 and has in recent times established around 90 branches in the UK. I had previously walked by their premises in Edinburgh but today was to be my first opportunity to sample the GDK wares. I have of course enjoyed a Döner many times in Germany where it is an immensely popular item of fast food. The sandwich bread housing the meat and salad is markedly different to the pitta normally on offer over here and it was time to test the authenticity of the produce.
We found a free table and ordered a couple of Boss Boxes, which included fries, sides and three sauces alongside the classic kebab. I was most impressed with the meal and at around a tenner per head, this is what you'd normally pay in a fast-food restaurant for a staple menu item with a few extras thrown in. A nice treat and a place I would certainly return to. Makes a nice alternative to the usual choice of McDonald's, Burger King and KFC - although I eat happily at all these places, the latter in particular. Nicole had to return to the university and I went back to the McManus to see the special exhibitions. I detoured through the Keiller Centre - a small (by today's standards) shopping mall in the heart of Dundee that has been trading for decades and occupies the former city-centre site of Keiller's jam and marmalade factory. It was a bustling place when I was at university and contained a diverse range of little outlets. Today the commercial viability of the operation seems to be hanging by a thread.
More than half the retail units are now empty and a mere handful of shoppers were trudging around. I seemed to be the only potential customer under the age of 60! I bought a paper and a few postcards from the newsagent and poked around the various nooks and crannies, wondering how the centre could have declined so badly. It's a different age now, of course. Email barely existed when I was a student, never mind online superstores such as Amazon. Do teenage kids hang out in shopping centres these days? Probably not. I can't really see much of a future for the Keiller other than hanging on grimly for a few more years until it finally collapses. The interior of the building is tired and who would spend money on a makeover when only a trickle of rent is coming in? I headed back over to the McManus, passing the McDonald's where I briefly worked as a student for the princely sum of £3.05 per hour. Mind you, a couple of shifts paid for quite a few pints of ale! Plus you ate for free while on duty. Upstairs in the museum I sought out The Street display - a walk down memory lane comprising recreations of shop fronts and interiors from days gone by. A cobbled walkway added to the retro atmosphere. I had already seen the old-style pub mock-up as it was previously shown downstairs, but everything else was new to me. The original William Low grocer's shop struck an instant chord with me as I vividly remember the popular chain's existence around Central Scotland. In fact, I did my shopping at Willie Low's for the first few months of my university life until Tesco mounted a successful takeover bid in 1994. Almost unbelievably, there were only 17 Scottish Tesco stores at this time. Another name from the not-so-distant retail past was Draffens - a famous independent department store that was absorbed by Debenhams in 1981. That was a little before my time but I do remember Arnotts trading until the early 90s under the House of Fraser banner. It was formerly known as DM Jones and this High Street institution also featured in the exhibition. All large cities had these high-end emporia but they have largely disappeared over the last few decades. Even the fabled Jenners on Princes Street, Edinburgh, is facing an uncertain future after lockdown. Other old businesses to browse in the museum were the pawnbroker, toy store and shoe shop. Our town centres have always changed and evolved but what was previously a gradual process has been rapidly accelerated by the sudden arrival of the pandemic at a time when e-commerce already had its claws dug well in. Who knows where we are headed in that respect?
My final port of call was a vast selection of photography (shot in black & white) by Joseph McKenzie. The time period ranged from 1964 to 1987, which traces the changing face of Dundee during the age of industrial decline and slum clearance. The exhibition was titled "A Love Letter to Dundee" and subdivided into the themes of A City in Transition and Hawkhill - death of a living community. London-born McKenzie studied photography while serving in the RAF and began lecturing in the subject in 1964 when he took up a position at Jordanstone Art College. He became internationally acclaimed for capturing the lives of working-class people, often during times of urban decay and subsequent upheaval. Popularly known as the "father of modern Scottish photography", he used only monochrome film and was formally commissioned by the City of Dundee soon after arrival to document the construction of the Tay Road Bridge. This enabled him to preserve images of the city that would soon be wiped off the map forever by developers. Given free rein to access all areas of the building project, McKenzie had the uncanny ability to poke around behind normally closed doors, capture fleeting moments, scale great heights and catch the surroundings unawares during periods of dim light. Modern health & safety precautions most likely ensure such photo shoots will never take place again. The amazing series of bridge photos form part of the City in Transition display but they are preceded by a chronicling of the demolition of Dundee West Station. The grand Victorian facade was blitzed to make way for a ring road. The platforms below street level were incorporated into the present Dundee Station (then known as Dundee Taybridge) which is why arriving in the city today is a subterranean experience for train travellers. What was deemed progress in the 1960s did not entail retaining a station simply because it had an outwardly attractive appearance. The road bridge was the dawn of a new era but the harsh realities of the construction period in an unforgiving climate shine through the images, as does the itinerant working life of many of the labourers. Another collection portrayed working life in the remaining Dundee jute factories, McKenzie again focussing his lens on a traditional industry that would not last much longer.
The Hawkhill exhibition documents the decline of major Dundonian enterprises, like Cox’s Camperdown Works and the legendary Wallace Pie Shop within an inner-city district. Bleak landscapes are on display alongside beehive hairdos, gossiping women, nimble weavers and trendy students going about their business in the university hub. McKenzie’s photo essays are poignant reminders of the twists and turns in the ever evolving life of a major city. He pounded the streets of Hawkhill for years, building up a montage of the transformation. His findings illustrate how change and progress can brutally drag a close-knit community into the future with no real regrets or even pause to reflect, only to mourn the passing of the old ways many decades henceforth. I've always thought there's a little conundrum at play with social change. People wax lyrical about the unbreakable community spirit of the old days, how everybody knew everyone else and that folk were in and out of each others houses all the time. No doubt some of that has been exaggerated over time and I refuse to believe everything was hunky dory back then, but we have basically distanced ourselves from a way of life that's often trumpeted as being more fulfilling. Yet the local people themselves have had a hand in enforcing these circumstances. We now erect garden fences so people next door can't see what we are up to, we choose not to frequent pubs as often as we did in the past and we embrace the home-ownership culture to leave our roots behind. When council housing was sold off to tenants, those who bought sought to make cosmetic alterations to announce to the world this property was owner-occupied. I'm not saying any of this is wrong. People can live as they please. But yearning for a past you have actively moved away from is - in my humble opinion - a case of the rose-tinted specs being firmly superglued in place.
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