Towns > Aberdeen > 1840-1846 - Bon-accord directory > 1840-1841

APPKNDIX.
185
hall, or spacious arcade devoted to the sale of vegetables, butter &c,
there are placed, opposite cross avenues, two handsome stone fountains
or jets d'eau, with basins capable of holding three thousand gallons
each. And in the new line of street there is a Corn Market and
Central Exchange. "The main entrance to the Exchange (con-
tinues the same narrator) is undistinguishable in the line of houses,
audit is only on going through a lobby that the grandeur of the placo
is apparent. The interior is a semicircular area, measuring 150 by 95
feet, with a corresponding height, and powerfully lighted by a great
number of windows in the roof, supported on flying buttresses. We
enter by the flat side of the semicircle, and are immediately struck
with the great extent of floor of tasselated pavement — the lofty pi-
lastered walls— the vast roof, with its numerous beams, pointed and
ornamented — and, above all, by the bold design of a simicircular col-
onnade of fourteen pillars, painted to resemble yellow-veined marble.
This colonnade is a main support to the roof, and encloses a space
slightly raised and carpeted on the flat side of the structure, and laid
out as a news-room, with handsome tables and chairs. Thus, there
is an open walk, of great breadth, on the paved floor of the house,
round the convex side of the colonnade. Opposite the colonnade, a
double stair conveys the visiter to an elegantly fitted up tavern or
coffee-room, to which there are other entrances from the adjoining
streets. Altogether, this Central Exchange is an exceedingly grand
structure, more like what one might expect to form a magnificent
temple than a place for merchants congregating, and therefore
strongly characteristic of that principle of advancement in society
which connects elegance and refinement in architecture with other
purposes besides the public offices of religion." And so it may be
said prospectively with regard to the new markets of the city of
Aberdeen — the locality on which they are building was anything
but useful or ornamental to the city ; and we hope the success which
has attended this speculation will induce the spirited projectors to
strike out some farther improvements of a like important character.