In the late 19th century, Glasgow was the "Second City of the Empire," its Victorian sandstone tenements and grand civic buildings funded by the profits of River Clyde shipbuilding — at its peak the Clyde yards launched around a fifth of the world's ships. Deindustrialisation through the 20th century emptied the yards and blackened the sandstone with soot; regeneration since the 1980s scrubbed the stone clean and repurposed the riverfront for culture, from the Riverside Museum to the SEC Armadillo.
Glasgow's tenements are built from local red and blonde sandstone; a century of coal smoke turned most of them black until cleaning campaigns from the 1970s–90s revealed the original stone colour underneath.
A 3D model of a Glasgow city block along the River Clyde, morphing between the soot-blackened Victorian sandstone tenements and giant shipyard cranes of 1900, and today's cleaned stone and glass-fronted riverfront culture buildings.
How the same sandstone tenement terraces and Clyde riverbank changed physically: stone colour from soot-black to sandstone-blonde, shipyard cranes disappearing, and modern riverfront museums and concert halls rising in their place.
Drag the Era slider (or click Toggle era) to blend between 1900 and today. Adjust smoke density, the number of vessels on the Clyde, and time of day, then orbit the camera to explore the block from any angle.
At its industrial peak, shipyards along the Clyde built roughly a fifth of the world's ships; many of Glasgow's tenements were only cleaned back to their original sandstone colour from the 1970s onward.