88-89 Shore Street, Gourock

4 John Street in Gourock is a three-storey and basement block of corner tenements built in 1895, designed in the Glasgow style. This former Co-operative building features a red sandstone ashlar front, with coursed rubble and harl on the rear and sides. It has a cill course at the first and second floors, an eaves cornice, and a tall pierced parapet. The windows on the second and third floors are set in shallow recessed panels, and there are carved cartouche panels that divide the bays.

On the northeast elevation facing Shore Street, the building has a four-bay layout that includes a projecting chamfered corner bay on the outer right. This bay is corbelled above a corner doorway, which is adorned with a carved tablet featuring shaking hands and a tree motif within laurel wreaths. The elevation includes bipartite windows and a lugged pediment that breaks the eaves. The central bays feature single and tripartite windows, and there is a three-storey canted bay that is corbelled above the ground floor. The shopfronts have mostly been altered, but rounded ingoes can still be seen at No. 89, and No. 90 has a tiled doorway that has been painted over, along with boxed-in fascias.

The southeast elevation on John Street is a three-bay return of the corner tenement, with a canted window in the centre bay flanked by bipartite windows. There is a round-arched and keystoned semicircular doorway on the left bay, leading to a transomed double inner door. The centre bay has a small tripartite window, while the right bay features a shopfront. No. 4 is a three-bay tenement with a centre bay that has a roll-moulded doorway flanked by a window with a carved roundel above, set in a corniced panel. Above, there are bipartite and tall transomed bipartite stair windows, and paired windows in the outer bays, with two-storey canted oriels that are corbelled above.

The northwest elevation is gabled, and the southwest elevation mirrors this. Some timber sash and case windows with plate glass glazing are present, along with small-pane windows in the stair areas. The building has a slate roof with gablehead stacks on the northwest and southeast sides, and two tall coped wallhead stacks on the southeast, along with mutual stacks.

Inside, the common stairs feature cream, black, and green tiled closes and stairs, complemented by decorative iron railings and turned timber newel posts.