Blond and red sandstone warehouses and civic buildings on a grid of wide straight streets, and the corner World War Z dressed as Philadelphia.
What Merchant City looks like
Merchant City is a grid of streets running east from to the High Street, crossing each other at right angles. The blocks are four to six storeys, in blond and red sandstone with tall windows and deep cornices repeating along each frontage.
Virginia Street and Wilson Street run narrow and close, lined with plain former warehouse walls, their loading bays now filled in with shopfronts and bars. Part of Wilson Street is paved rather than kerbed, with a blue police box standing on the stone. Albion Street runs wider, red sandstone tenements over ground floor shops and bars the length of it, cars parked along the kerb.
Candleriggs has the City Halls, behind the cast iron and glass arcade of the Scottish Music Centre, with the Old Fruitmarket beside it. Merchant Square, a covered courtyard of bar and restaurant fronts on two levels, sits a few doors along. The on Glassford Street was designed by Robert Adam and finished by David Hamilton in 1794.
Hutchesons' Hall stands at the top of Hutcheson Street, a white columned portico under a domed clock spire. on Ingram Street has a tall spire and Gothic tracery windows from 1824, set apart from the sandstone blocks around it. On Albion Street the former Daily Express Building breaks that run, a black glass and chrome striped front over a concrete frame, put up in the 1930s among buildings two centuries older.
Shot in Merchant City
Productions have dressed Merchant City's grid as American cities more than once. World War Z closed and George Square for Philadelphia in 2011, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny used the same corner for New York in 2023.
World War Z, 2013
Cochrane Street
Played Philadelphia City Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, present day
Gerry Lane and his family are stuck in traffic on Cochrane Street when the outbreak reaches the city. The production closed the street for two weeks from 15 August 2011, adding American road signs and traffic lights. The buses and taxis stuck in the jam ran on Philadelphia plates. Glasgow City Chambers, visible behind them at the George Square end of the street, plays Philadelphia City Hall.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, 2023
Played Hunter College, New York City, New York, 1969
Indy walks out of Hunter College at the corner of Cochrane and John Streets in the film's 1969 sequence, and the door he uses is Glasgow City Chambers. The production dressed the block for a recreation of the ticker tape parade held for the Apollo 11 astronauts, adding American bunting, 1960s shopfronts and US fire hydrants. The two arched bridges connecting the City Chambers' wings run over John Street just north of the corner.
What Merchant City can double for
Fleet Street in London, England
The former Daily Express Building on Albion Street went up in 1937 with the same black glass and chrome striped front that Ellis and Clarke gave the Express's own Fleet Street building five years earlier. Both use the black Vitrolite and clear glass curtain wall the firm fitted to every Express building of the decade, so a tight shot on the Glasgow front could stand in for the London original. Red sandstone offices run along the rest of Albion Street in view beyond the black front, and modern shopfronts and parked cars along the street need the usual control for a 1930s frame. Try searching black glass front now.
Meadowside in Dundee, Scotland
The former Courier Building at 22 Meadowside is a five storey palazzo style office block in red sandstone ashlar, built from 1902 with an arcaded ground floor of round headed arches. It runs close to the scale of Merchant City's own red sandstone blocks on Wilson Street and Albion Street, both from the same building boom. A ten storey tower added above the original block in 1960 is visible from most angles and would need to be framed out or hidden behind a foreground building for an early 1900s shot. Try searching red sandstone palazzo block now.
