Starbucks 58 West Nile Street
Decorative Carving
Architect: James Boucher
This listed building features a Starbucks on the ground floor and winged mythical creatures sitting either side of the secondfloor balcony, judging you for getting whipped cream on your latte.
Athenaeum Building
8 Nelson Mandela Place
Portrait Statues and Allegorical Figure Groups
Sculptor: John Mossman
Among the figures portrayed along the top of the former Athenaeum Building are English Baroque composer Henry Purcell, and the English portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. The building was inaugurated by Charles Dickens in 1847.
The Library of Royal Faculty of Procurators
68 West George Street 12 Nelson Mandela Place
Busts of Law Lords
Sculptor: A. Handyside Ritchie Architect: Charles Wilson Built: 1854
The keystones of windows and doors in ground floor are ornamented with heads of many of the most distinguished Scottish law lords. In the front, to West Nile Street, beginning at the north window, are the carved likenesses of Lords Erskine, Mansfield, and Brougham; in West George Street, of Lord Blair, John Erskine, Lords Stair, Kaimes, and Forbes; in St. George’s Place are James Reddie and Professor Miller, then Lords Moncrieff, Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Rutherford. Over the principal door is placed the head of Lord Jeffrey, and over the other that of Lord Stair, as if to remind entrants of the penetration and sagacity, the acumen and erudition, as well as the probity necessary, to master the difficult science of jurisprudence.
Gallery of Modern Art Royal Exchange Square
Decorative Carving
Architect: David Hamilton Builder: John Smith & Son
The building of the Gallery of Modern Art the most visited modern art gallery in Scotland was originally a country home. It was built in 1775 for one of the city’s most wealthy “Tobacco Lords”, William Cunninghame ofLainshaw, who made his money overseas during the American War for Independence.