Museum And Library

The building is a museum and art gallery located on Borough Road in Sunderland, constructed between 1877 and 1879 by architects J & T Tillman. It is designed in a Chateau style and built from sandstone ashlar with a slate roof. The structure is two storeys high and consists of thirteen bays, with the central bay being wider and featuring three bays in the returns.

The building has a high rusticated plinth and a tall projecting central bay that includes a pediment over an arch supported by paired Corinthian pilasters, leading up to paired doors framed by keyed arched surrounds. The projecting end bays are adorned with dentilled pediments on rusticated square pilasters, each featuring a blind roundel above a pedimented surround for a window with a keyed round-headed architrave. Similar windows are found in other bays beneath blind panels.

The bays flanking the center have rusticated outer pilasters, while giant attached Corinthian columns define the intermediate central bays. The top entablature has a dentilled cornice that continues from the end pediments and supports a balustrade. In the bays flanking the center, this balustrade supports canted coping that follows the line of the central pediment, suggesting a pediment over the three central bays. The central bay is topped with a convex-hipped roof that features wrought-iron railings, which are also present on the tall hipped roofs of the outer bays, while the lower main roof is hipped.