Galen Building with steps, walls and railings attached

The Galen Building is a technical college, dating from 1900 with a later addition in 1928. It was originally part of Sunderland Polytechnic, and is now a building within that institution. The foundation stone was laid in 1899, and the building opened in 1901, with plans for future expansion. Designed by A.W. Hennings of Potts, Son and Hennings, it represents a 17th-century style.

The building is constructed of bright red brick in a Flemish bond, with yellow terracotta quoins, strings, and dressings. The roof is tiled with terracotta cresting, and the floors are of steel and concrete. The building has a basement and two main floors, with a four-storey tower on the right return. The main block features a parapet with ogee pediments over the projecting two-window sections. Steps lead up to an elaborate porch. The porch has double panelled doors with an overlight in a keyed architrave, supported by columns in antis, an entablature bearing the inscription "TECHNICAL COLLEGE" in terracotta, and a shaped parapet with scrolled pediments displaying borough arms. Most windows are mullioned and transomed, except for the central three windows on the first floor, which are round-headed with keyed architraves and Renaissance ornament. All windows are sash windows with upper glazing bars. The building features floor and sill cornices, and an eaves cornice with modillions in the projecting sections.

The tower has a three-light basement window, a round-headed ground-floor window with casements positioned below the radiating glazing bars of the transom light, a four-light mullion and transom window on the third stage, and a bracketed clock in the top stage, supported by paired pilasters with free Corinthian capitals, an entablature, and a parapet with panelled corners and central cartouches. The high-hipped roof has low dormers with glazing bars, a ridge plinth with dentils and swan-neck pediments supporting a domed arcaded lantern. The tower includes a raised dome.

Attached to the building are sandstone piers with pulvinated friezes, ogee coping, and ball finials. Stone steps lead to the porch and the left end of the building. Brick walls with chamfered sandstone coping enclose the right return, incorporating spike-headed wrought-iron railings with scrolled stays and intermediate panels around the front and tower. Plainer railings extend beyond these on the right return.

The building was constructed under powers granted to local authorities by the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act of 1890 to access central funds for technical education.