78 West Princes Street, Helensburgh

76 West Princes Street in Helensburgh is a three-storey, nearly symmetrical Arts and Crafts tenement building, designed by Robert Wemyss in 1896. It is situated on a corner site and features a taller two-bay corner block with modern shops and licensed premises on the ground floor. The exterior is harled, with red sandstone ashlar and brick dressings and detailing. Notable architectural features include a cornice at the ground floor, a cill course, overhanging eaves, ashlar mullions on canted windows, sandstone architraves, and bracketed cills on the first floor.

On the south elevation facing Princes Street, there is a two-storey circular corner tower on the outer left, which is corbelled at the first floor. This tower has three windows on the first and second floors, with the central windows set in an ashlar panel and a brick apron below the second-floor window featuring a carved ashlar panel with a masque motif. The design includes mock half-timbering detail below the eaves and a conical slate roof topped with a finial. To the right of the tower, there is a bay with first and second-floor windows linked in an ashlar panel, and the second-floor window features a round-headed pediment with a decorated tympanum that breaks into the gable head. A corbelled and consoled ashlar pilaster strip with a ball finial is present at the second floor. There are also two off-centre windows on the right at the first and second floors. The taller gabled bay on the outer right has a full-height canted oriel, with an ashlar and brick panel between the windows and a brick string course at the gable head, which includes a carved ashlar panel at the center.

The west elevation facing James Street features a shouldered gable with an apex stack to the left of the corner tower. It has ashlar coped skews, block skewputts, and a corniced stack. The skew to the left is interrupted by a corbelled pilaster strip similar to the one on the south elevation, flanked by a scrolled skewputt on the left. Windows on the first and second floors are set in a round-arched panel, with a mannered scrolled pediment above the second-floor window. There is a gabled bay off-centre to the left, detailed similarly to the Princes Street elevation, with windows on the first and second floors set in an ashlar panel with brick detailing in between. To the far right, there are narrow windows on the first and second floors.

Most of the windows have been replaced with PVC, although some original plate glass sash and case windows remain, featuring a three-pane lower sash that is vertically divided and multi-pane upper sashes. The building has a tiled roof and corniced stacks.