Argyle Street runs between sandstone tenements with restaurant fronts along the ground floor. The Finnieston Crane still stands on the quay by the river.
What Finnieston looks like
is a wide arterial road here, sandstone tenements four and five storeys tall on both sides. Restaurants, bars and a scatter of independent shops fill the ground floors under painted timber fronts and canvas awnings. Traffic runs both ways along a single carriageway, with cars parked along the kerb on each side. The block at 1349 to 1359 Argyle Street holds an antiques dealer, a cafe and a pizzeria under one continuous facade, the pattern repeated in different combinations along the strip.
South of Argyle Street, Stobcross Quay runs along the Clyde. The stands on the quay, a 53 metre cantilever crane with a 46 metre jib, idle since the dock it served closed. Behind it the 's overlapping aluminium shells, built in 1997, curve up from the riverbank. The Hydro's saucer roof from 2013 stands beside it, with open parking ground between them and the water.
Behind Argyle Street the side streets are plainer. has a run of red sandstone tenements at its corner, a different stone from Argyle Street's own blond sandstone. holds The 78, a single storey pub painted white under a slate roof, with tenement blocks standing behind it. At a former engineering works survives in red brick, WM COOK AND SONS still legible across its arched windows.
Shot in Finnieston
Fear, a Prime Video thriller from 2025, used The Gannet on Argyle Street as a location. The BBC series Vigil filmed its Russian consulate scenes at 15 Royal Crescent, a few streets over. Death Watch, a 1980 film, shot along the docks that lined the river here. That ground was later cleared for the exhibition centre.
Fear, 2025
The Gannet on Argyle Street
The Gannet, used in the scene, has since closed and reopened at the same address as Eleven Fifty Five. Next door the stone fascia above the Kelvingrove Cafe still reads NEWSAGENT AND TOBACCONIST, a leftover from an earlier shop.
Leith Walk has the same four storey scale as Argyle Street, cream sandstone tenements with shops built into the ground floor. The block at 276 to 278 Leith Walk is late Victorian and ashlar fronted, with a shopfront at street level, close to what Argyle Street itself looks like. Leith Walk has carried tram tracks and overhead wires down the middle of the street since 2023, which Argyle Street does not, so Argyle Street can stand in for an earlier Leith Walk. Contemporary shopfront signage and parked cars still need the usual control for anything set earlier than the present. Try searching cream sandstone tenement shopfronts now.
Perth Road in Dundee
Perth Road, in Dundee's West End, has its own run of four storey Victorian tenements over ground floor shops. The block at 227 to 229 Perth Road is a symmetrical four storey and attic tenement from 1877 with an ashlar ground floor, close in scale to Argyle Street. Perth Road is a working shopping street for the university area, so contemporary signage and window displays need the same control as Argyle Street's own restaurant fronts. Its sandstone runs blonder in places than Dundee's general reputation for red stone would suggest, closer to Argyle Street's own colour. Try searching Victorian tenement ashlar ground floor now.
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