180F Centre Street, Glasgow

180F Centre Street, Glasgow

A B McDonald designed this former Southern Fire Station, built between 1914 and 1917. It is a striking complex in the Free Renaissance style, comprising two large impressive linked three-storey blocks with eleven bays each, arranged around a courtyard, and featuring a distinctive hose tower and associated courtyard buildings.

The main blocks are constructed predominantly in red sandstone ashlar at ground floor with red brick to the upper storeys. They are characterised by a base course, channelled ground floor, a wide band course between ground and first floor, an eaves cornice, and a low parapet. Architectural detailing includes canted oriel windows to the first and second floors and predominantly broken pediment hoodmoulds to first floor windows, with occasional carved panels at eaves level.

The eastern block's street elevation displays a central advanced doorway with an imposing pair of columns rising to the second floor with Ionic-inspired capitals. These flank single light windows and support a large segmental canopy containing a shield and wreath motif. On either side are two bays with large rectangular windows at ground floor and tripartite windows above, separated by pairs of pilasters with ashlar and brick banding. The outer three bays on each side are mirrored, with a central bay featuring stylised figurative carving at eaves level, flanked by tripartite windows with canted oriels at first and second floors. The northern elevation is blank and harled. The southern elevation has a single bay with tripartite windows and canted oriels at first and second floors to the far left, with an entrance at ground floor featuring pilasters and a lintel with wide band course forming a link to the southern (Wallace Street) block. The courtyard elevation is plainer, with a near-central entrance and a round-headed window above at the second floor surmounted by a narrow canted parapet section, flanked by a pair of large arched openings with canted oriel windows at the first floor to the right, and further entrances with round-headed windows above at the second floor to the left and right.

The southern block's street elevation features a central advanced bay with tall pilasters with Ionic-inspired capitals at first floor rising to the second floor, flanking bipartite windows surmounted by a segmental canopy enclosing a carved fireman's helmet within a wreath. The outer five bays are mirrored on each side: bays one and three display tripartite windows with canted oriels at first and second floors flanking a bipartite section with a carved motif at eaves level, whilst bays four and five contain tripartite windows divided by shallow pilasters with ashlar and brick banding. The western elevation is blank and harled, the eastern elevation blank, and the courtyard elevation is plainer with a central entrance with round-headed window above at the second floor surmounted by a narrow canted parapet section, and further entrances with round-headed windows above at the second floor to the left and right.

Within the courtyard stands a distinctive six-stage square hose tower with channelled ashlar to the ground floor and dressings, and brick to the upper stages. A large cill course at the sixth stage sits beneath an eaves cornice. Single light windows are set into round-arched recesses with keystones at the fourth floor on the south and north elevations, whilst the west and east elevations are blank but feature round-arched recesses with keystones at the fourth floor.

The courtyard also contains a recessed single storey former laundry building in brick to the left of the tower, and to the right a single storey flat-roofed section with a round-arched entrance doorway and pitched roof section to the north. To the north stands a two-storey, six-bay brick building with ashlar dressings and an eaves cornice, with an entrance at bay three. To the northeast is a later flat-roofed brick fire engine garage with large timber doors on the southern elevation.

Glazing is largely original, featuring timber sash and case windows with horns. Street elevations predominantly retain eight-pane and twelve-pane windows, whilst courtyard elevations mostly have four-pane or two-pane windows, and the tower has eight-pane windows. The courtyard building to the north has replacement windows. The roofs are predominantly covered in grey slates with large brick ridge stacks featuring ashlar cornices.

The interior has been altered and modernised, but the original stairwells and cast-iron banisters with timber handrails in the south block survive.