Life Association Building, 119, 121, 123 St Vincent Street, Glasgow

The Life Association Building, located at 119, 121, and 123 St Vincent Street in Glasgow, was designed by James Thomson of Baird and Thomson in 1899. This elaborate early German Renaissance commercial building features red sandstone ashlar with a polished red granite ground floor and highly decorative carved details. It stands six storeys tall with attics and has an asymmetrical frontage divided into three vertical sections facing St Vincent Street, along with a semi-octagonal angle tower and a roughly symmetrical wide gabled elevation on Hope Street.

On St Vincent Street, the left bay has a plain entrance at ground level, with bipartite windows on the first and second floors, tripartite windows on the third and fourth floors, and bipartite windows on the fifth floor. The center section features a double doorpiece flanked by Corinthian coupled columns beneath a heraldically decorated parapet, with three windows on each floor above and polished granite columns on corbels at the fifth floor. The right bay includes a four-storey arch over the ground floor, adorned with Corinthian banded pilasters and a carved tympanum, canted windows on the first and second floors, and bipartite windows above. All the windows are uniquely treated, many displaying highly elaborate decorations. The gabled attics above the main cornice are equally elaborate, featuring engaged columns, obelisks, and finials.

The angle turret is corbelled over the first floor, with pilastered windows and oval windows on the top floor set in decorative frames with engaged columns at the corners. The fourth-floor windows are adorned with mask keyblocks of the architect, James Thomson, and the turret is topped with an ogee copper domed roof and a cupola.

On Hope Street, there is a prominent central gable section with superimposed orders crowning an aedicule that includes a figure, flanked by a lion and a unicorn. The large turret on the south side has a different design, featuring bay windows and over-arched bipartite elements. The treatment on St Vincent Lane is plainer, with recessed splayed bays. The interior of the building has been modernised.