ABSTRACT
59This eight-storey office block in the centre of Glasgow is one of the pioneers of the use of reinforced concrete construction in Britain. Despite this, its appearance remains conventional, owing much to the Scottish tradition of decoration of commercial buildings. In the latter part of the 19th century, Glasgow, like Liverpool and Manchester, had been energetically reinterpreting the architecture of the Italian palazzo and the established Gothic precedent for its new commercial premises. But Glasgow had also been closely watching the latest developments on Continental Europe, as well as maintaining a reverence for its own particularly Scottish traditions of architecture.
