88-98 High Street, Ayr

88-98 High Street in Ayr is a four-storey and attic Renaissance-style building designed by John Mercer in 1883. The structure features a nine-bay facade, grouped into a four-bay section and a five-bay section, with a modern shopfront at ground level. The exterior is finished in polished red ashlar, with the four-bay group showcasing banded rustication and a dentilled cornice above the shopfront, along with cill courses on the upper floors. The five-bay group has a lower cornice for the shopfront, a cill course at the third floor, and a balustraded parapet. Both sections are capped with a continuous mutule cornice and have architraved windows.

On the west elevation, the four-bay group has a modern shopfront at ground level and regular fenestration on the upper floors. The first floor features lugged windows with cornices, while the second and third floors have panelled aprons. A decorative bracketed iron balcony is located at the centre pair of windows on the third floor.

The five-bay group on the west elevation includes three pairs of glazed modern two-leaf doors at the centre, flanked by shop windows. The first floor has consoled and pedimented windows for the three central bays, with small brackets under the cills of the second-floor windows. The second-floor windows also feature advanced rectangular panels. Banded rustication decorates the pilasters on the outer bays, and the first-floor windows have consoled cornices. The second floor includes Venetian windows set in arched recesses, complete with sculpted spandrels and bowed balustraded balconies. The third floor has tripartite windows, with scrolled pedimented dormers aligned above in the attic, along with flanking stacks.

The building predominantly has plate glass timber sash and case windows, with four-pane designs on the first and second floors of the four-bay section to the left. The roof is covered in grey slate, featuring a French pavilion roof on two dormers. The five-bay group has four square-plan banded stacks with segmental heads rising from pilasters, along with broad corniced stacks at the outer left and right and in the centre. The interior was not seen in 1998.