Overgate Centre - Historical Background

Historical Background

The centre is located where, until the 1960s, there was a street called the 'Overgate'. The street ran from the corner of Reform Street to North Lindsay Street, passing along the north side of St Mary's Parish Church. The Overgate was also once intersected by Tally Street which acted as important connection from Couttie's Wynd to Burial Wynd (now Barrack Street). The 'gate' in Overgate comes from the Old Norse word 'gata' meaning road or street and has the same origins as the word gait meaning to walk. The street was referred to as 'Overgate' because it was the higher of the two roads running alongside the City Churches, the other being called the Nethergate (i.e. lower road). Gate and gait can often be found in historic and modern street names mostly meaning the same thing and Dundee's city centre retains several streets of a similar name: Nethergate, Cowgate, Seagate, Murraygate, Wellgate and Marketgait. The Overgate's old and dilapidated properties were deemed 'slums' in the early 20th Century. James Thomson proposed their clearance in his city plan of 1910. A similar proposal came in the form of the Adams Plan of 1937; this did not progress due to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The 1960s Overgate Centre was a mixed-use development comprising hotel and offices to the west (fronting West Marketgait), a pedestrian precinct (incorporating an upper tier of shops) facing the City Churches;and anchor stores / covered mall to the east (to Reform Street). It was designed by Ian Burke, Hugh Martin & Partners in 1963 and hailed as the first comprehensive town-centre development of its type in Scotland. It included public sculpture panels in concrete and painted steel (depicting women in traditional market scenes) by Ian Eadie. It also had a roof-top car park accessed from Lindsay Street. Abandoned by the more fashionable chainstores when the Wellgate Centre (an enclosed mall) opened in 1978, it became much neglected and run-down within a decade. Attempts at refurbishment by replacing concrete panels with decorative steel were rejected in favour of comprehensive redevelopment.