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Original Text (Annotation: SPW027198 / 1158453)
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Site of the Tontine Hotel, Trongate. The Tontine Coffee Rooms was one of the favoured meeting places of the rich tobacco and textile merchants in Glasgow. It was built in 1781 by William Hamilton behind the existing frontage of the town hall with its pedimented windows and street-level arcade.
The keystones of the arches of the arcade were carved with heads and grotesques known as the "Tontine Heads".During the 18th and 19th centuries the coffee shop under the piazza was a meeting place for leading figures from the community. The hotel was reputedly the first in the city and was popularly known by Glaswegians as the "Hottle". The hotel was destroyed by fire in 1911.
The postcard view of the hotel (top) is sometime between 1903 and 1906.
The Tolbooth and the Tolbooth Steeple are on the right of the photograph, at Glasgow Cross. The equestrian statue, of King William III, was erected in the Trongate in 1735, moved to the middle of the street in 1898, and removed to its current location in Cathedral Square in 1926 after three years in storage.
The building that replaced it falls short of the Tolbooth Steeple. '