Four Square Tobacco Factory, Greenhill Road, Paisley

The Four Square Tobacco Factory, located on Greenhill Road in Paisley, was designed by James Steel Maitland between 1936 and 1939. This building is an example of early industrial modernism situated on an urban site. It features a simple long rectangular plan with a projecting tower at the rear, possibly for stairs. The factory has a symmetrical street elevation with 19 bays and three storeys, topped with a flat roof.

The design is horizontally oriented but is enhanced by four shallow-advanced glazed pylons that break the wallhead at the centre and end bays (bays 2, 8, 12, and 18). The first and second storey cill courses are decorated with distinctive projecting corbel brackets. The windows are strip windows with iron-framed multi-pane glazing and wire-meshed reinforced glass. Vertical wall mullions have a blue bronze-panelled surface, with brick beneath. The central pair of wall mullions harled the end gables of the loading bay to the north. The rear elevation is also continuously glazed, and there is a subsidiary building attached, which has been partly demolished as of 1990.