Grey Granite

Once Aberdeen Central School, then a Music Centre and now the Academy Shopping Centre. Like most of Aberdeen's granite buildings, it looks beautiful in sunshine - when you can catch it.

The strongly detailed building in the Rennaissance style was built in 1901 for the Aberdeen Central School. The striking triangular plan and use of horizontal coursing anchors the building to its prominent corner site, situated opposite the Art Gallery. The building features a prominent landmark dome and wealth of Classical features. The building's relatively late date accounts for the unusually decorative scheme making use of the advances in granite cutting techniques available at that time.

The architect, John Alexander Ogg Allan, attended Robert Gordon's College and Gray's School of Art on the opposite side of the road, 1883-87. His RIBA Journal obituary reads, 'Mr Allan held a distinguished place among architects in Scotland and was regarded in the north, throughout the first half of the present century, as the leading authority in the field of educational building and architecture'.

In 1963 the school moved out to form Hazelhead Academy.