Prominent Buildings
Today the east side of the square is dominated by the ornate Glasgow City Chambers, headquarters of Glasgow City Council, which opened in 1888. On the South side are a number of buildings, including the former General Post Office, built in 1878 and redeveloped into offices in 2007, a Chicago-style office building, dating from 1924 and there is also the city's main Tourist Information Centre.
The North side consists of Queen Street Station, the North British Railway Hotel (now the Millennium Hotel), which date from the 1840s, and George House, which replaced an older Georgian building, built in 1979 to provide extra office space for Glasgow City Council, and now the offices of Ernst & Young.
Queen Street, running parallel to the square's West side, features the city's Chambers of Commerce building, which was designed by John Burnet and opened in 1874, two storeys were added by JJ Burnet in 1907 and are topped by a domed tower on which is perched a ship on a globe, a reminder of the importance of sea trade to Glasgow's prosperity. The western side is also the location of the former Bank of Scotland building, which is now offices and a Wetherspoons restaurant and bar.
The eastern side of the square itself is flanked by two lawns and is also the site of the city's Cenotaph, which was designed by JJ Burnet and originally built to commemorate Glaswegians killed in the First World War when it was erected in 1922 by the Earl Haig Fund. An 80-foot-high (24 m) column in the centre features author Walter Scott, which was erected in 1837. Many of Glasgow's public statues are situated around the square and include the only known equestrian statues of a young Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert, poets Robert Burns and Thomas Campbell, inventor James Watt, chemist Thomas Graham, generals Sir John Moore, Lord Clyde and politicians William Ewart Gladstone, Robert Peel and James Oswald.
Read more about this topic: George Square
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