24 Cowell Street

24 Cowell Street is a building that forms part of a pair with 26 Cowell Street, located on the east side of the street. The ground floor of No 26, which was formerly the South Wales Union Bank, is mostly destroyed, but the narrow shopfront of No 24 remains, featuring pilaster piers and a curved glass shop window. An elliptical arch above the shopfront may still be visible beneath a 20th-century fascia. Historical photographs reveal that the original design included a highly ornate two-bay center with panelled piers, elliptical arched windows, and a moulded frieze, likely made of glazed or semi-glazed tile. To the right was the shopfront that remains today, while to the left was a matching narrower arched doorway to the bank, which has not survived.

The upper floors feature a prominent first-floor oriel window situated between a pair of four intricately carved timber brackets that support a carved and painted timber frieze. The second floor is tile-hung, and the attic also has two windows, with a coved plaster cornice above the second floor and a keyed roundel in the attic gable. The first floor is roughcast, and the oriel window is of a late 17th-century vernacular style, resembling a Venetian window but with top-lights on the outer lights, all featuring very small panes. This window style is repeated on the second floor, though it is smaller and flush, while the attic has pairs of small-paned casements topped with double-curved pediments. The apex roundel originally had glazing bars and floral festoon decoration. The gable features bargeboards and a metal sunflower finial. The side bays are varied; the right bay has one window on each floor similar to those on the second floor of the center, coved eaves, and a small-paned flat dormer in the roof. The narrow left bay has a two-storey canted oriel that extends up to a belvedere turret with an octagonal tiled roof and a sunflower finial. The oriel features small-paned windows with top-lights on the two main floors, tile-hanging, and the turret has arch-headed small-paned windows on three sides, a moulded timber cornice, and a steep bell-cast tiled roof.