There is an old building north of Birmingham whose present use is much less interesting than its outline.
You can still read “cinema” in the façade even though there has not been a film shown there for decades. The entrance is too broad for what the building does now. Two shallow recesses beside it look like they once held posters. Higher up, the brickwork becomes unnecessarily decorative in the way buildings did when going out was supposed to feel like an occasion.
I am deliberately not naming it here because I am more interested in the type than the particular building. North Birmingham has plenty of structures whose original purpose survives as a kind of architectural accent after everything inside has changed.
The best time to notice them is when shop signs come down or units stand empty for a while. For a few weeks the newer layers disappear and the older building shows through.
Then someone puts up a new sign and the history goes back into hiding.