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Original Text (Annotation: SPW048776 / 1437903)
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Glasgow Harbour Tunnel Rotundas.
This is the North Rotunda located on Tunnel Street with the South Rotunda at Plantation Place.
The Glasgow Harbour Tunnel Rotundas are two iconic red brick stone buildings which flank the River Clyde in the Finnieston area.
Designed by Simpson and Wilson, and built between 1890 and 1896 by Glasgow Tunnel Company, the Rotunda covered 24-metre (79 ft) deep shafts to tunnels which enabled vehicular and pedestrian access to the other side of the river.
Pedestrians, horses and carts - and later motor vehicles - would be hauled up by hydraulic lifts provided by Otis Elevator Company of New York.
During the Second World War, the tunnels were temporarily closed because all the metal from the lifts was removed to contribute to the war effort.
The tunnels were an expensive venture to run and were passed to the council to run as a service in 1926.
The increased costs of running the tunnels which were prone to damp and the increase of motor cars on the roads lead to the closure of the pedestrian tunnel in 1980, and the vehicular tunnels being filled in 1986. Though the pedestrian tunnel still exists, it is closed to the public.
Originally, three-storey red and white brick towers stood alongside the Rotundas, containing the hydraulic accumulators that powered the lifts, but these have been demolished.
See South Rotunda below. '
