Scottish Legal Life Building, 76-84 Wilson Street, Glasgow

Alexander Skirving, 1889. 4-storey Renaissance

commercial building with domed pavilions to S corners.

Red sandstone ashlar with polished granite base course;

moulded channelling to ground floor; dentilled cornice

at ground, plain 1st floor cornice and main cornice.

S (WILSON STREET) ELEVATION: 11-bay with tripartite corner

feature (see below). Entrance at centre with polished

granite Corinthian columns, keystoned lintel, ornamental

frieze, modillioned cornice with crowning anthemions;

2-leaf panelled door. Subsidiary doorway in penultimate

bay to right, with consoled and corniced doorpiece with

Thomsonesque pediment. Windows in remaining bays.

"The Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society" carved on

frieze. 9 windows to each floor in 2-storey round-arched

arcade at 1st and 2nd floor, with fluted Ionic columns,

masque keystones and carved spandrels; outer bays

flanked by channelled pilaster; Thomsonesque detailed

pediments to 1st floor windows, and to aedicule at

centre; paterae in frieze. 3rd floor windows with

pilastered ingoes; shell ornaments above centre and

outer bays. Lion and unicorn armorial breaking coped

parapet at centre. Domed pavilion to outer right bay

(SE), with fluted columns, pilasters and anthemioned

cornice.

CORNER (SW): tripartite; chamfered at ground with

pilastered jambs; bowed above from 1st and 4th

pavilioned floor, pilastered to 1st and 2nd floors, with

"Scottish Legal Buildings" incised on frieze. Copper

cupola with ball finial and Baroque oculus; bowed

centrepiece flanked by columned and pilastered

pedimented bays.

W (VIRGINIA STREET) ELEVATION: 10-bay. Simplification of

Wilson Street elevation with broad pediment over central

bays.

REAR ELEVATION: line of former attached building evident

with yellow bricks above; red brick classical warehouse

adjoined at ground.

Plate-glass glazing pattern to sash and case windows

predominating, with some small-pane to arched windows

and some 2-pane lower panels.