Geddes in Edinburgh -1

In September 1925, Lewis Mumford spent a week with Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh, a time he found both frustrating and happy: 'he took me about the city,' Mumford wrote, 'showed me the hundred improvements that he had made or initiated; waste spaces become gardens, courts tidied, tenements renovated...'*

During my brief stay in Edinburgh in October last year I was lucky enough to take a short tour, of portions of Edinburgh remodelled by Patrick Geddes in the early 20th century, with Lou Rosenburg - author (with Jim Johnson) of the recent Renewing Old Edinburgh: The Enduring Legacy of Patrick Geddes (Argyll Publishing, Edinburgh 2010).

Our tour began with a brief visit to Ramsay Garden of which, Johnson and Rosenburg write:

'Geddes... created Ramsay Garden on a sloping site adjacent to the Castle Esplanade. This remarkable housing development resulted from his fruitful collaboration with two talented architects, S. Henbest Capper and Sydney Mitchell. On this dramatic and difficult site, an L-shaped configuration of flatted accommodation was created through an imaginative blending of new construction and adaptations to older buildings. The end product was a colourful vertical composition, with a mix of harl and timber, grey slates, red tiles and red sandstone, grouped on the Castlehill side around a lovely, semi-enclosed communal garden.' (p. 75)




* Lewis Mumford 'Note written after visit with Geddes in Edinburgh' 19 September 1925 in Frank G. Novak, Jr (ed) Lewis Mumford and Patrick Geddes: The Correspondence Routledge, London/NY 1995,  p. 341