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

James Thomson (Baird and Thomson), 1899. Elaborate early German Renaissance commercial building. Red sandstone ashlar with polished red granite ground floor much highly decorative carved detail. 6 storeys and attics. Asymmetrical frontage in 3 vertical sections to St Vincent Street, semi-octagonal angle tower, roughly symmetrical wide gabled elevation to Hope Street.

ST VINCENT STREET: left bay plain entrance at ground, bipartite 1st and 2nd, tripartite 3rd and 4th, bipartite 5th. Centre section: double doorpiece of Corinthian coupled columns in the heraldic decorated parapet, 3 windows each floor above, polished granite columns on corbels at 5th floor. Right bay: 4-storey arch over ground with Corinthian banded pilasters and carved tympanum, canted windows 1st and 2nd, bipartites above. All windows differently treated many with highly elaborate decoration. Equally elaborate gabled attics over main cornice with engaged columns, obelisks and finials.

ANGLE TURRET: corbelled over 1st floor, pilastered windows, oval windows in top floor in decorative frames with engaged columns at angles; 4th floor windows have mask keyblocks of the architect, James Thomson; ogee copper domed roof with cupola.

HOPE STREET: big central gable section with superimposed orders crowning aedicule with figure, flanked by lion and unicorn. Large turret to different design at S, bay windows and over-arched bipartite features. Plainer treatment to St Vincent Lane with recessed splayed bays. Interior modernised.