Description

James Davidson, 1898. 2-storey rectangular plan Renaissance style public house with offices (former Masonic hall) above. Extending along Bank Street with commercial and domestic properties. Red sandstone ashlar, chanelled to ground floor. Canted corner with oriel window and triangular pediment above eaves. Continuous frieze for signage, moulded string course at impost level on first floor, frieze and cornice to wallhead, blocking course. Large public house windows and shop windows on ground floor.

N (BANK STREET) ELEVATION INCLUDING NOS 1,3 AND 5: symmetrical elevation. Central bay contains two round-headed keystoned doorways. Bays divided on the first floor by coupled Corinthian pilasters and containing bipartite and tripartite round-headed windows with Corinthian columns. Prominent wallhead stack with flanking balustrades. CANTED BAY: round-headed opening to ground floor within pilasters with grape and hop motifs to capitals. Corbelled tripartite oriel window with Corinthian columns. Piended roof to corner pediment with square terminal and ball finial.

E (ROSS ST.) ELEVATION: round-headed doorway and plate-glass window to ground floor, tripartite window over.

7, 9, 11, 13 BANK STREET: 2-storey 6-bay range, with square-headed bipartite windows to first floor, and alternating round-headed entrances and shopfronts to ground. Timber panelled and later flush doors. Plate-glass windows to public house; plate-glass sash and case windows to first floor. Grey slate roof. Wallhead and ridge stacks with decorative clay cans.

Statement of Interest

This is a well-detailed example of a multiple-use building of the late 19th century by an important local architect and sits in a prominent location on a main road into the town.

The building was designed to house a Masonic hall. Valuation rolls of the period record that in 1898 St James Masonic lodge was already occupying No 5 Bank St. The same document records a Mary King owning a spirit shop known as the 'Sharks Mouth.' There had been a public house on this site since at least 1858 when the previous building on the site is marked as 'Railway Tavern' on the town plan.

The pattern of the shopfronts along Bank Street is continuous as far as the railway bridge, although the wall height is lower and there are simpler bipartite square-headed windows. The building is now divided into a number of properties, with a separate business now operating out of the Western part of the Bank Street elevation.

James Davidson (1848-1923) was a successful Coatbridge architect who designed a number of schools and commercial buildings in the town, including Gartsherrie Primary School (1906), Airdrie Savings Bank (1920), Glenboig Union Fireclay Company and Broomknoll Parish Church. Davidson's most prestigious commission was for The King's Theatre in Edinburgh (1905-6), which he designed in collaboration with J D Swanson.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q77777713

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Georgian Style and Design for Contemporary Living
• 
  This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House
• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
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  Hampshire: South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)