The Iron Building, as locals often call it, stands out for its massive, repeating glass windows framed in cast iron. Built in eighteen fifty-five, it served as the showroom and warehouse for Walter Macfarlane and Company. Macfarlane…
Style Mile Victorian Arcades
We'll trace Glasgow's famous pedestrian center to admire the spectacular glass-roofed shopping arcades and historic cast-iron department stores of the industrial golden age.
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1. The Crystal Palace
2. Ca'd'Oro Building
The Ca d'Oro building features a distinct corner tower topped with a glass-covered dome that rises above the surrounding streetscape. Built in eighteen seventy-two as a warehouse for a furniture company, it borrowed its Venetian Gothic…
3. Frasers
The massive stone building on the corner of Buchanan Street and Ingram Street is House of Fraser. Its most distinct feature is the row of ornate, arched windows stretching across the upper floors, framed by polished granite and intricate…
4. Argyll Arcade
The Argyll Arcade features a high, glass-paned barrel roof that stretches from Argyle Street to Buchanan Street. Built in eighteen twenty-seven, it remains the oldest covered shopping arcade in Scotland. When it opened, the arcade served…
5. Sloans
Sloans occupies a narrow, three story building tucked into an alleyway just off Argyle Street, identifiable by the blue-tiled exterior and the ornate, curved entrance arch. Established in seventeen ninety-seven, it operates as the oldest…
6. Princes Square
Princes Square features an intricate, art nouveau glass canopy that arches over an open central courtyard. Completed in eighteen forty-one, the structure originally served as a warehouse and office space for merchants trading in the…
7. Royal Exchange Square
The Royal Exchange Square centers on a grand neoclassical building with a massive portico of Corinthian columns. Originally built as a private townhouse for tobacco merchant William Cunninghame in seventeen seventy-eight, it became the…
8. Merchant Square
The tall, red sandstone arches of the Old Fruitmarket dominate Merchant Square, framing a vast indoor courtyard where the city once traded produce. By the mid-nineteenth century, Glasgow merchants filled this space with the scents of…