The bricks are sand yellow. That is the prevailing colour of the building at least. If you were to take a moment, as few do, you’d notice that every third brick is black, or a loud brown. The windows are evenly spaced, up and across, like holes on a connect-4 frame. They are tall, presumably spanning half the height of each storey. The frames are a contrasting charcoal grey, thin as match-sticks. The panes are thin and let out little light, giving the sense of a dark, cavernous interior. The emerging impression from some distance is that the windows are not glazed at all. The headers arch across each window-top, in neat orange brick.
The roof is flat, but there are two false gables that facade the small storage rooms on the roof. Each has a large, clear porthole that provide a maritime sentiment suitable to its history. Drain pipes run from the roof down between every third column of windows, in matching charcoal. Elliptical anchor plates with pronounced crosses would historically mitigate the bowing of these external walls, pinned together on either side like bookends. Today their purpose is decorational, rather than structural, offering a reminder of this ward’s antiquity.
Six floors high, it runs the length of this narrow cobbled street, casting it into permanent shadow. Behind it, modernity flourishes, but from street level, it engulfs perspective.