21-25 Rosemount Viaduct, Aberdeen

This is a grand Edwardian tenement block, built in 1897 by A Brown & G Watt, prominently situated on a corner plot with a shallow curved front along Rosemount Viaduct. The building is four storeys high, with an attic, and comprises four bays by three bays, delineated by a pilastrade. The eastern and western ends feature projecting corner towers with conical slate roofs, the eastern tower being particularly striking. The front elevation is constructed from granite ashlar, while the rear is granite rubble. Windows are paired throughout, with sash and case glazing; the upper sashes are multi-paned, while the lower sashes are plain.

The ground floor shops largely retain their original features, with shopfronts divided by polished pink granite pilasters and paired console brackets to the fascia. Original timber doors are architraved, and feature tall, oblong fanlights with radial astragals dividing the margin into eight compartments. Examples of these original fanlights survive at numbers 11, 17, 23, and 53 Skene Street.

The first floor is elaborately detailed with horizontal banding and shallow canted oriel windows in the outer bays of the three-bay blocks, which rise through the second floor. A pierced parapet caps these oriels. The third floor and attic are plainer. The attic bays are grouped together in four blocks, topped by a cornice and a symmetrical wallhead composition that includes a pair of wallhead stacks flanking a small curved pediment at the centre. The parapet is open along the main elevations, with blind sections below the central wallhead pieces, which are vertically banded to resemble balusters and rise above the wallhead stacks. Ball finials adorn the canted angle bays.

The east corner tower is tightly curved, circular to the second floor, then corbelled to a hexagonal shape at the third floor and attic, all sitting on simple cubic die-blocks. Curved glazing is present at the first and second floor levels. The second-floor windows have apron panel detailing. The attic windows have column mullions with exaggerated entasis. The roof is a slim cone, with a columned belfry stage below a saucer-domed cap, topped with a weather vane.

The west corner tower has a shallow canted shape and a plainer hexagonal slate spirelet roof. It also features column mullions to the attic windows, with apron panels at the second floor, mirroring the detail on the east corner. Two return bays extend onto Skene Street. The four return bays at Skene Terrace are built of granite ashlar with projecting cill courses, a broad decorative, vertically banded stack, and a plain parapet. An adjacent single-storey enclosing wall has a shaped wallhead gable with swan-necked scrolls and a wallhead stack rising through the centre, enclosing a rear courtyard at Skene Terrace.