Thomas S Tait Quotes

“In SMT Magazine and Scottish Country Life, Alastair Borthwick informed would-be visitors that 'Facing you as you enter... are the Cascades - seventeen waterfalls pouring 400 feet down the hillside - and the Grand Staircase, which is a double flight of steps running on either side of the cascades'. Soaring above these at the crest of Bellahouston Hill was the exhibition's 'sensational and symbolic centrepiece' - the 300-feet-high Tower of Empire which Thomas S. Tait designed with assistance from Launcelot Ross and from structural engineer James Mearns... In height, it was equivalent to a skyscraper - a building type most Scots would have known only from illustrations in newspapers and magazines - but the effect of slenderness Tait achieved also made it suggestive of some sort of futuristic scence fiction fantasy structure that might be used to tether airships, for example. Its design captured the imaginations of all who saw it and it was undoubtedly the exhibition's one truly awe-inspiring building.”
― Bruce Peter, Art Deco Scotland: Design and Architecture in the Jazz Age