Northpark House (formerly BBC Scotland, formerly Queen Margaret College)

JT Rochead 1871

A renaissance palace worthy of its architect's reputation in Glasgow's West End (Rochead having been responsible for some of the most imposing terraces that line the grand boulevard of Great Western Road), Northpark House represents a grand yet well-known sight to anyone familiar with Queen Margaret Drive and has survived a Doctor Who-like quantity of impressive incarnations.

From its original role as private house (to the lavishness of which its galleried-double height entrance hall still testifies) the house progressed to become the home of Queen Margaret College, a groundbreaking venture with the then-novel aim of providing education for women. A Medical Building (by John Keppie) was subsequently added to the building's rear, and the involvement of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the design of that structure has - predictably - become the primary focus of popular attention on the entire site in latter years.

In the 1920s the house narrowly escaped being demolished to make way for Queen Margaret Drive to access the new Queen Margaret Bridge; a toss-up between this loss or the removal of the Kibble Palace was avoided by plotting the road along a kink between both structures.

The most renowned phase of the building's life was as BBC Scotland's Broadcasting House. A series of developments in the 1930s and 1970s involved the building-over of the remaining gardens, the enclosure of the Medical Building and (in 1970) the closure of access to the nearby - and generally forgotten - bridge spanning the Kelvin. The long occupancy of the BBC, which saw the coming and going of strings of celebs and the notorious seizure of videotape by Strathclyde Police, finally ended in 2007 with a move to the award-winning Pacific Quay building.

Northpark House now stands unused and isolated with the Queen Margaret College Medical Building in the vast, cleared former BBC site. An attempt to present the building's potential as a 'boutique hotel' was set in train just on the cusp of the financial crisis, and the company intending to develop the remaining part of the site is now in administration. The view from Hamilton Drive is dismal, and no positive future for this building or the vast, fenced-off,  yet previously quasi-publicly-owned prime West End site that surrounds it seems likely.