68 Virginia Street, Glasgow

The Scottish Legal Life Building, located at 76-84 Wilson Street in Glasgow, was designed by Alexander Skirving and completed in 1889. This four-storey commercial building showcases a Renaissance style, featuring domed pavilions at the southeast corners.

Constructed from red sandstone ashlar with a polished granite base course, the building has moulded channelling at the ground floor, a dentilled cornice at the ground level, a plain cornice on the first floor, and a main cornice at the top.

The south elevation on Wilson Street consists of eleven bays, highlighted by a tripartite corner feature. The central entrance is framed by polished granite Corinthian columns, a keystoned lintel, an ornamental frieze, and a modillioned cornice topped with anthemions. The entrance includes a two-leaf panelled door. To the right, there is a subsidiary doorway in the penultimate bay, featuring a consoled and corniced doorpiece with a Thomsonesque pediment. The remaining bays contain windows.

The frieze prominently displays "The Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society." The first and second floors feature a two-storey round-arched arcade with nine windows on each floor, supported by fluted Ionic columns, masque keystones, and carved spandrels. The outer bays are flanked by channelled pilasters, and the first-floor windows have Thomsonesque detailed pediments, along with an aedicule at the centre and paterae in the frieze. The third-floor windows include pilastered ingoes, with shell ornaments above the centre and outer bays. A lion and unicorn armorial is positioned at the centre, breaking the coped parapet. The domed pavilion in the outer right bay (southeast) features fluted columns, pilasters, and an anthemioned cornice.

On the southwest corner, the tripartite design is chamfered at the ground level with pilastered jambs. The upper section bows from the first to the fourth pavilioned floor, with pilasters on the first and second floors. The frieze is incised with "Scottish Legal Buildings." A copper cupola with a ball finial and Baroque oculus crowns the building, with a bowed centrepiece flanked by columned and pilastered bays.

The west elevation on Virginia Street has ten bays and is a simplified version of the Wilson Street elevation, featuring a broad pediment over the central bays. The rear elevation reveals the line of a former attached building, with yellow bricks visible above; a red brick classical warehouse is joined at the ground level.

The building predominantly features plate-glass glazing patterns in its sash and case windows, with some small-pane arched windows and a few two-pane lower panels.