135 High Street, Montrose

This is a mid-19th century, three-storey and attic tenement building located on High Street, Montrose. The front of the building is constructed from sandstone ashlar, with a rougher, squared and snecked texture on the side and rear elevations. The building features shops at ground level.

The west (principal) elevation has a classical design with a continuous dentil cornice above the shop frontages and cill bands at the second floor. The front bays are regularly spaced, with corniced heads and consoles on some first-floor windows. The original arrangement of a central door and large flanking windows is retained in the shop fronts of numbers 137, 141, and 143. Pilastered, round-arched entrances with scrolled consoles lead to a common stair and pend, located centrally and on the extreme right of the building. Five dormers are present in the attic, four with anthemion cresting, with a later flat-roofed dormer on the right.

The south elevation is a blank, rendered gable. The north elevation is asymmetrical, with a two-bay gable end to the right and a two-bay section to the left with a rendered, flat-roofed addition at the third floor. A single-storey wing with a pedimented doorpiece and a flat-roofed addition above is also present, with basement openings and a later window at ground floor.

The east elevation displays several features associated with the Carlton Hotel and Corner House Hotel. A pend with a round-arched entrance is flanked by a corniced projection supported by pillars and pilasters. The main block is two bays wide, with a blocked ground floor opening and an advanced stair tower. The corner of the building is marked by a projecting bay with a round-arched, tripartite window, columned facing east, and square corner piers with a cast-iron balustrade. A separate gable-ended block, part of number 139, extends to the east. It has a three-bay south face with two corniced doorpieces and stone mullioned windows with raised margins on all three floors. Later additions extend from the Corner House Hotel to the east, with a projecting bay at the third-floor level which is part of the original tenement.

The building has a grey slate roof with stone skews. Ashlar gablehead stacks are present on the north and south sides, with two broad ridge stacks between them, and a brick stack on the north pitch of number 139. Most windows are timber sash and case, with four or six panes to the front, plate glass to the shop fronts, and varied window types on the north and east elevations.

The interior of the Carlton Hotel features a spiral staircase and principal rooms with decorative cornices, including egg and dart, water leaf, key pattern, and bead moulding. The interior of number 139, entered from the south elevation, also features cornices with similar details.