48 and 50 St John Street (former Bank of Scotland and Central Bank), Perth

A three-storey five-bay Italian palazzo style former bank, built to the designs of David Rhind in 1846. It is constructed in ashlar masonry with quoins and a deep modillion cornice with a balustraded parapet. There are Roman Doric pilastered doorcases on the outer ground floor bays and Corinthian aedicular windows with pediments on the first floor. The building is prominently located in the centre of Perth on one of the principal shopping thoroughfares, facing the east end of St John's Kirk.

The principal west elevation features a cantilevered and balustraded balcony at first-floor level and an ornamented string course between the first and second floors. The four-bay south elevation to Baxter's Vennel is similar but without the doorpieces and first floor balcony. To the rear (east) is a full-height gabled return, abutted by a two-storey rectangular-plan flat-roofed extension added in 1971, with rendered walls and slate hung tiles to the upper floor. The north elevation has a full-height screen wall with a plain string course and cornice, set back from the main street to the west. There is a single-storey two-bay ashlar stone extension to the re-entrant angle facing St John Street, with moulded architraves to the shop windows and a balustraded parapet.

The interior has not been recently inspected, but planning documents from 2022 and sales photographs from 2023 indicate that historic decorative features survive, notably an elaborate ground-floor coffered ceiling, cast-iron balusters on the main stair, and a top-floor vestibule with roof lantern and columns.

The building was constructed in 1846 and first appears on the Ordnance Survey Town Plan published in 1863. This map also depicts a two-bay extension on the north side, showing that a range of buildings once extended the full length along Oliphant's Vennel. Later maps indicate that these structures were largely demolished between 1900 and 1931, leaving only the extant single-storey frontage and the three-storey screen wall behind. Their original function is unknown, but they have since been incorporated as part of the building's current commercial use. Prior to the bank's construction, the site was occupied by older tenement buildings with a vennel and central courtyard, as shown on the Perth Directory Town Plan of 1838.

The Central Bank of Scotland was established in Perth in 1834 to attract business from the farmers and landowners of the town's large rural hinterland in the southern Highlands. The bank engaged the noted Edinburgh architect David Rhind (1808–83) to design their head office on St John Street in 1846. Rhind was at that time completing the head office of the Commercial Bank of Scotland on George Street in Edinburgh (1843–7) and would go on to design most of the branch offices of that bank. By the 1860s, the Central Bank was suffering financially and its business was acquired by the Bank of Scotland in 1868, including the premises on St John Street.

The large rear extension was added in 1971 as an extension of the banking hall, with plain classical interior detailing imitating the more elaborate decoration designed by Rhind. In 1990 the Bank of Scotland branch at 175 High Street was closed and merged with the branch on St John Street, which in turn closed around 2004. The building was then refitted internally for commercial use but has been vacant since around 2020.

The bank is largely unaltered to the exterior, with the exception of replacement doors, retail signage, and two wall-mounted streetlights.