115-120 Briggate and 2-16 King Edward Street, and 121-126 Briggate, Leeds

Shops and offices built between 1898 and 1904, with later alterations and additions. Designed by Frank Matcham for the Leeds Estates Company as part of the County Arcade development. The Free Baroque style building was substantially extended in 1930–1931 with an Art Deco structure at the Briggate and Kirkgate corner by Chorley, Gribbon & Foggitt. From 1938 the whole complex functioned as a single department store.

The principal block fronts the south side of King Edward Street and extends to returns on both Briggate to the west and Fish Street to the east. A separate though similar block stands across Fish Street (separately listed Grade II). The 1930s building adjoins the south side of the original block at the corner with Kirkgate.

The 1898–1904 block is constructed of pressed brick and Burmantofts buff terracotta with mahogany shopfronts trimmed in black Siena marble. The building rises three storeys plus basement and attic. Matcham's design employs rich decorative terracotta, including shaped window surrounds, Dutch and Flemish gables, and relief strapwork incorporating scrolls, foliage, carved heads, and plaque decoration. A large polygonal-roofed turret marks the north-west corner at Briggate; a smaller matching turret with polygonal roof sits at the Fish Street junction.

The ground floor contains mahogany shopfronts with slender mullions and decorative spandrels. These are 1990s reproductions replacing a 1930s open loggia-style arcade with recessed display windows. Ground-floor bays are separated by black polished-granite pilasters. The first-floor windows are large casements with round and basket-arched heads, prominent keystones, and carved Ionic mullions in the style of gaines. Second-floor windows are simpler, with plate-glass sashes. The King Edward Street elevation concludes with a dentilled cornice and balustraded parapet topped by shaped, pedimented and Dutch gables. The western and eastern elevations adopt similar styling.

At the Fish Street corner stands a turret incorporating three elliptical roundels with coloured and gilded mosaics depicting an artist's palette and measuring tool, probably referencing an original occupier at 16 King Edward Street, flanked by scrolled foliate ornament. An original entrance doorway survives at ground level here. Two small dormer windows with north-west corner views toward Briggate and King Edward Street have been retained, though the roof has been replaced and substantially raised. A late 20th-century plant deck, not of special interest, straddles the roofs of both sections.

The 1930–1931 building at the Briggate and Kirkgate corner comprises five storeys plus basement, with the fourth floor set back to avoid blocking light to neighbouring properties. Constructed with a steel frame and Portland stone cladding, it features steel casement windows with margin lights throughout. The structure is largely rectangular but with a slightly angled south elevation following Kirkgate's line.

The ground floor is clad in black polished granite. A deep signage fascia runs across both principal elevations, supported by pilasters with stepped capitals and integral display cabinets (now partly boarded over). Below the fascia is an Art Deco patterned frieze of electrocopper glazing in clerestory style. Metal shopfronts replaced original entries; a later doorway now occupies what was a shopfront window on the Briggate side. Two former entrances on each side have been converted to shopfront windows. The south-west canted corner, which originally contained three shopfronts including one to the canted corner itself, was altered in the 1990s when a main entrance was created.

The three bays wrapping the south-west canted corner rise slightly higher than the rest, surmounted by a solid parapet with stepped zig-zag patterned frieze. Large windows wrap around the canted corner's sloped sides on the three main upper floors, separated by cast-iron panels with zig-zag mouldings painted cream or pale yellow. The remaining bays feature recessed glazed curtain walling in a concertina-like pattern below a fluted frieze, with bays separated by octagonal pilaster strips. A plain parapet with later railed balustrade tops the elevations.

The far-right bay of the Kirkgate elevation includes an additional storey at roof level in matching materials, added in 1995 following demolition of the neighbouring property at 7 Kirkgate. This storey incorporates a glazed stair and lift tower providing access to a fourth-floor restaurant created that year. The flat-roofed fourth floor, originally service and kitchen space but converted to a restaurant in 1995, is rendered and set back from the roof edge with a walkway and narrow paved terrace wrapping its west and south sides. A slender fully glazed addition to the south side, added in 1995, is not of special interest.

The interiors have been substantially altered and modernised in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, losing their original features, and are not of special architectural or historic interest. The roof coverings comprise slate, asphalt and corrugated steel to the original block; the 1930s building uses corrugated steel and paving slabs.