10 Elmbank Gardens

10 Elmbank Gardens is a prominent high-rise building in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow, Scotland. The signature 13-storey tower (often nicknamed the Charing Cross Tower or the Elmbank Tower) overlooks the M8 motorway and stands directly opposite the Mitchell Library, it was designed by Richard Seifert and constructed between 1971 and 1975. It is one of the tallest and most prominent high rise buildings on the western side of Glasgow city centre, beyond Blythswood Hill. The building once formed part of a wider complex of mixed-use commercial buildings known as the Charing Cross Complex, but as of 2026 these have been demolished as part of wider plans to regenerate the Charing Cross area, with only the tower remaining.

The 1960s saw great change in Glasgow, following on from the Bruce Report with initiatives well under way to depopulate the overcrowded centre, removing slum housing and the construction of a new system of high speed roads around the central area. The districts of Charing Cross and Anderston lay in the path of the Glasgow Inner Ring Road (now part of the M8) and consequently huge swathes of buildings were demolished to make way for its construction. The Richard Seifert Co-Partnership won the commission for much of the regeneration plan for the area, a grand scheme was planned which would stretch from the former Anderston Cross to the Charing Cross area. The original plans for the 'Charing Cross Complex' (as the buildings were originally named) would have made use of the infamous Charing Cross Podium which stretched across the motorway, but in the end only fragments of the Seifert scheme were built - likewise his nearby Anderston Centre was never fully realized either. Whilst much of the tower was constructed in 1971, work was halted for nearly 3 years after structural problems due to subsidence in the area, and following repairs the building was finally completed in 1974. The original tenant of the building was YARD (Yarrow-Admiralty Research Department) - part of the naval shipbuilder Yarrow Shipbuilders - and it was officially opened by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1976. YARD Ltd. was acquired by CAP Group when it purchased Yarrow plc in 1986, which in turn merged to form Sema Group in 1988. The YARD subsidiary remained the tenant until 1992 when the merger of CAP Scientific with British Aerospace to form BAeSEMA resulted in consolidation of its activities in the city and it moved to a new office building at 1 Atlantic Quay on the Broomielaw. The building was vacated, and stood empty for over two years until a new use was found. In the early 1990s, the Glasgow Development Agency had undertaken market research which showed that there would be a need for 650 budget hotel bedrooms in the city by late 1995. With this in mind, in 1994 the a lease on the building was taken by a company called Surveylink from its owner, Westmoreland Properties, to create a 270 bedroom hotel which was to be operated by the YMCA. The £4.5 million refurbishment of the building was undertaken by Taylor Woodrow (Scotland) Ltd to designs of Geoffrey Reid Associates and Structural Engineers Crouch Hogg Waterman, under the supervision of Surveylink who had their offices on the top floor of the building. The hotel opened in March 1995, creating 50 jobs. During the renovation, the building received a canopy on the roof, creating a covered "14th floor" to disguise the elevator penthouse. The two low rise blocks of the complex along Newton Street and Bath Street became legally separate entities from the hotel tower, and are owned by London & Scottish Property Investment Management (LSPIM), and assumed the "Elmbank Gardens" and "Venlaw Building" names in the 1990s after the original street address of the building. The hotel tower itself was

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).