McMillan Reading Room is a rare monumental interwar university library: a yellow-brick drum and shallow dome aligned deliberately with the University of Glasgow’s older Gilbert Scott buildings. It remains an active study space, while its exterior can be appreciated from University Avenue and the University’s published self-guided campus route.
Quick facts
- Date
- 1936–1939
- Architects
- T. Harold Hughes and D. S. R. Waugh
- Type
- Purpose-built university reading room
- Materials
- Reinforced concrete faced in narrow yellow Roman brick, with stone and metal details
- Designation
- Listed building, Category A (LB32927)
- OS grid reference
- NS 56939 66756
Architecture
The main reading room is expressed externally as a monumental circular drum. Bands of narrow machine-made yellow Roman brick wrap a reinforced-concrete structure above a continuous stepped plinth. A shallow saucer dome is set back behind the parapet, so the building reads from street level as a disciplined cylindrical mass rather than as a conventional domed temple.
On the south, a rectangular entrance block projects towards University Avenue. Its tall arched bay has relief keyblocks and stepped framing, with a simple doorway reached by stairs and graduated parapet walls. Vertical glazing rises above the entrance. Historic Environment Scotland also records swept brass handles on the glazed timber doors, narrow vertically linked windows, metal window frames and decorative rainwater goods.
The listing extends beyond the reading-room walls to the railings, lamp piers, gatepiers and boundary walls. The entrance axis aligns the building with the Gilbert Scott complex across the campus. That formal relationship helps the modern brick building hold its own beside the University’s much older Gothic Revival landmark.
An incomplete campus plan
The reading room was intended as the centrepiece of a new quadrangle of University offices, lecture rooms and an art gallery. The wider scheme was interrupted by the Second World War and never completed. The isolated drum therefore has an unusually strong presence in landscaped ground: it is both a finished building and evidence of an unrealised phase in the campus’s development.
It occupies the former site of Hillhead House, an approximately 1850 villa built for muslin manufacturer and calico printer Andrew Dalglish. Historic Environment Scotland considers the University Avenue walls and repositioned gatepiers likely survivals from that earlier property.
Patronage, recognition and use
The building was funded from a bequest commemorating University alumni Robert and Edith McMillan. It cost £20,000 and was planned to accommodate 565 of the roughly 3,000 students then matriculated. The design received the RIBA Bronze Medal for the best building in Scotland of 1936–1949.
The University continues to use the building—also called the Round Reading Room—as a group-study space and base for student-support services. Its published study-space information currently gives an 08:00–20:00 pattern, but this is operational information for a University facility and may change.
Visiting and access
The exterior can be viewed from University Avenue and from publicly accessible campus routes. The University includes the building on a self-guided route for prospective students, which gives a lawful way to understand its relationship to the Library, Fraser Building and surrounding campus. Visitors should respect any temporary barriers and avoid obstructing the active entrance.
General interior heritage access is not advertised. The building functions principally as University study and support space. The University offers limited public visitor passes for consulting material in its main Library, but expressly says those passes are not for people seeking quiet study; that scheme should not be assumed to confer access to the McMillan Reading Room. Anyone without University access who has a particular reason to enter should check directly with the University before travelling.
What to notice
- The contrast between the circular reading-room drum and rectangular entrance block.
- The narrow yellow brick, horizontal bands and shallow concealed dome.
- The tall arched entrance bay and vertically linked windows.
- The entrance axis towards the Gilbert Scott Building.
- The earlier boundary walls and repositioned gatepiers inherited from Hillhead House.
Timeline
- c. 1850 Hillhead House is built for Andrew Dalglish on the site.
- 1936–1939 Hughes and Waugh design and construct the McMillan Reading Room.
- 1939 onward War ends the proposed wider quadrangle scheme before it can be completed.
- 1949 The building receives the RIBA Bronze Medal for the best building in Scotland during 1936–1949.
- 1985 The building is added to the statutory list.
- Present It remains an active University study and student-support space.
What we know—and what remains uncertain
The statutory designation provides strong evidence for the building’s design, materials, patronage and original planning context. Current University pages confirm its continuing study role and published hours. They do not establish routine public admission to the interior, so no such access is claimed here. Opening patterns and campus routes can change and should be checked before a visit.
Sources & further reading
- Historic Environment Scotland: McMillan Reading Room, LB32927 — designation, architecture, setting, patronage and historical development.
- University of Glasgow: Reach Out study spaces — current use and published operating pattern.
- University of Glasgow: self-guided campus tour — exterior campus route and present institutional context.
- University of Glasgow Library: visitor passes — scope and limits of public Library access.
Location
OS grid reference NS 56939 66756 · Location confidence: High: the statutory designation supplies an official mapped National Grid Reference and the current source confirms the Place relationship or present identity. · Select the marker to open its satellite view in Google Maps. On desktop, drag Pegman (the yellow figure) onto a blue road. On mobile, turn on the Street View layer and tap a blue road. Other photo markers may be user-contributed.
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