Imperial Hotel, Stirling Street, Aberdeen

The Imperial Hotel, located on Stirling Street in Aberdeen, was designed by James Souttar in 1869, with additions by William Henderson in 1885. This large, three-storey hotel with an attic is built in a well-detailed Gothic style on a gushet site, featuring a central internal well and notable interior details. The exterior is made of tooled, coursed granite with contrasting ashlar dressings and includes band courses. The upper storeys predominantly have pointed arch windows, while other windows are segmental-arched. The building has a partly crenellated design, with a crenellated round turret on the southwest corner and another round turret at the northern apex of the triangular structure. The wallhead dormers are pedimented and semicircular gabled.

The elevations are asymmetrical, with a twelve-bay entrance elevation to the west. The left bay is slightly advanced and features a timber panelled entrance door with a bracketed balcony above, adorned with a pair of sculptured figures. Above this entrance are bipartite and tripartite windows with slender columned mullions and decorative fleur-de-lys features. There is a tripartite oriel window to the right.

On the south side, the hotel has a gabled seven-bay elevation with small hood moulded round-arched windows in the apexes and broad, coped stacks above with vertical indentations. There is a balcony on the first storey facing Trinity Street.

Inside, the hotel boasts a good decorative interior with several fine original features. This includes a dog-leg stair with a moulded timber balustrade, a double-arched entrance to the public room with a polished granite column, and four-panelled timber doors. The public room features a fine decorative plaster ceiling and cornice, along with some high-quality painted glass depicting Scottish and British heraldic symbols, as well as a small stained glass roundel of St Andrew. The windows are predominantly plate glass timber sash and case, and the roof is covered with grey slate, featuring ridge and gable stacks.