North side of Union Street 02: 480-506 Union Street

A photograph by Roddy Millar, taken 17/07/2024, from a series surveying the architecture of the north side of Union Street.

This image shows the buildings at the top of Union Street at Holburn Junction.

On the far right, at nos. 478-484, is the former cistern designed by John Smith and built in 1830. It was reconstructed in 1900 as a functioning tenement.

The smaller, 3-storey 492-494 sits to the left. It has a Sainbury's Local on the ground floor. Historically, this was the location of: A. & W. Alexander, until 1963, fishmongers and game dealer who were noted for striking window displays; William Low & Co., a supermarket famous for its part in the 1964 typhoid outbreak; Joe Harper's Bar; and Beluga, a bar and restaurant. It became a branch of Sainbury's in approximately 2012.

The large 3-storey and attic, 3-bay, tenement in the centre of this image is 496-502 Union Street. Historic newspapers show both 498 Union Street and, earlier, 50 Union Place being referred to as Alford House. This may indicate the early history of this tenement. Union Place was the former name of this part of Union Street.

Plans for alterations and additions at 48 and 50 Union Place are mentioned in the 'New buildings in Aberdeen' column in the Evening Express, 16/07/1887, p. 2. The plans have been submitted by a photographer called John McMahon. Later newspapers, such as the Evening Express, 01/02/1888, p. 3, feature to-let notices from MacMahon for flats at 50 Union Place.

It is therefore suggested that 496-502 Union Street was built around 1887-88 for John McMahon. The continuity of occupation shown in old Post Office directories reinforces this suggestion. The architect of the building is unknown at present.

Aberdeen City Council's Historic Environment Record describes the building as a tenement dating from the later 19th century. With classical detailing, it is built of coursed grey granite ashlar with a grey slate mansard roof with lead ridges, and coped stone skews with moulded skewputts.

The main (southeast) elevation is symmetrical with a decorative doorpiece to the centre of the ground floor, the doorway flanked by Tuscan columns with modern shop fronts to either side. On the top floor, a pair of segmental-arched windows break the eaves with a curvilinear roof to the centre of attic floor, with Venetian dormers to the flanking bays.

Fixture holes and marks for a tram rosette remain on the wall of 496 Union Street where metal brackets were fixed to the outside wall of the building. Their purpose was to support a tramway cable.

In this image the ground floor shops are occupied by a branch of Starbucks, at no. 496, and the Enid Hutt Gallery at no. 500.

Until at least the early 1980s, 496 was home to a outlet of the Mitchell & Muil bakery and from the mid-1990s to the early 21st century it was a McDonald's fast food restaurant.

Prior to Enid Hutt, which opened in Aberdeen in 2013, no. 500 was occupied by Endsleigh Insurance from no later than 1991 until August 2008. In the 1970s and 80s it had been a Church of Scotland bookshop.

Union Street