Horse Shoe Bar, 17-21 Drury Street, Glasgow

The Horse Shoe Bar, located at 17-21 Drury Street in Glasgow, is a Classical commercial building dating from around 1870, with interior remodels completed between 1885 and 1901. It is a four-storey, seven-bay structure with a roughly square plan, featuring a public house on the ground floor. The exterior is finished in polished buff ashlar, with bands of incised decoration between each floor. The windows are regularly spaced and deeply recessed between pilasters, with wide pilasters on the outer bays and narrower ones on the central bays.

Additional architectural features include decorative friezes, a cornice, and a parapet. The regular fenestration is divided by pilaster piers, with those on the top floor adorned with Corinthian capitals. The public house has a deep cornice above the fascia, and there are entrances at the second and sixth bays, each featuring two-leaf timber-panelled doors. Art Nouveau-style cast-iron grills are located above the ground floor openings at the outer bays, providing access to the upper floors.

Inside, the bar boasts a rich Edwardian decorative scheme. The lobbies feature decorative timber and etched glass inner two-leaf doors with elaborate brass door furniture. The ceiling is compartmented with a deeply moulded cornice, and the walls are lined with timber boarded panelling to dado height, which includes a carved decorative frieze and inset panels. The rear wall is adorned with mirrors up to the cornice and a clock mounted on a timber frame. There are timber chimneypieces with carved details, horseshoe-shaped openings, and pedimented overmantle mirrors, as well as slate chimneypieces on the side walls with similar horseshoe-shaped openings and overmantles.

The elongated timber-boarded horseshoe island bar has additional lobes added at the rear and is supported by slender turned columns. It features etched glass partitions and a terrazzo spittoon. The island gantry displays spirit casks and is supported by turned columns with a deep cornice, while cast-iron columns in the ceiling showcase horseshoe details on their capitals.