Aberdeen Town House

After rapid population growth in the first half of the 19th century, civic leaders decided that the early 17th-century tolbooth and the early 19th-century courthouse, which had been built adjacent to the tolbooth, were inadequate for their needs. They decided to demolish the old courthouse and to incorporate the remaining part of the tolbooth into a new structure. The new building was designed by Peddie and Kinnear in the Scottish baronial style and was completed in 1874. The design involved an asymmetrical frontage with fifteen bays along Castle Street; the central section of five bays featured segmental-arched arcading on the ground floor and double-height segmental-arched windows on the…