The medieval Glasgow Cross continues at the junction of High Street, Trongate and Saltmarket. The town’s tron, weighing scales, was placed next to the steeple of the town house in the 1550s. The Tron Steeple, as it became known, still stands at Glasgow Cross, one of the few remaining pre-Victorian buildings in Glasgow.
The area now known as ‘Merchant City’ was developed from the 1750s onwards. It also includes St Andrew’s Square, adjacent to Glasgow Green. Residences and warehouses of the wealthy merchant “tobacco lords” were built in the area. The district west of the congested High Street became the ancient burgh’s first planned New Town, with wide, straight streets, vistas, churches and squares, marking the start of aspirational residential movements westwards. That movement would continue with new names over two centuries, including, from 1800, the creation of a second New Town, being Blythswood upon Blythswood Hill, west of the new Buchanan Street, rising to Blythswood Square and beyond.