Cory's Building

Cory's Building is a five-storey structure designed in a Free Italianate Classical style with some details derived from Mannerism. The front is asymmetrical with thirteen windows, featuring an ashlar façade and a channelled ground floor with a granite plinth. The central section is highlighted by a giant order of pilaster strips, part fluted, and a stepped parapet that includes a segmental pediment. Similar pilasters are present in the end bays. The ground, second, third, and fourth storeys are marked by cornices, with dentil detailing on the second floor. The windows are horned sash types, some adorned with bracket cornices and volutes.

On either side of the central columns, which have elaborately foliated bulbous bases, the floors are connected to the central bay by a coffered giant arch with foliated spandrels, supported by paired pilasters and flanking a splayed bay window with an open pediment. The first floor of the flanking sections also features similar splayed oriels, while the end bays contain paired segmental-headed windows and camber-headed windows set in squared recesses on the ground floor.

The central entrance is accentuated with Grecian brackets supporting a stout balustrade with urn finials and an inscribed entablature, leading to a recessed doorway. The left side of the building is constructed of red brick with stone banding. The right corner is set back on the top two floors, rounded below, and is dated 1889 on the second floor. The right-hand side has a two-plus-one window arrangement adjoining the former Board of Trade building, with the right bay slightly stepped back. It features similar window treatments, including a round-arched recess on the first floor that contains an aedicule and oculus, along with swags over a semicircular-headed entrance with panelled double doors.

Inside, the building retains an openwell staircase with an arabesque ornamented iron balustrade and a moulded handrail that is scrolled at the base. Some windows are fitted with small-pane glazed shutters as secondary casement glazing.