29 Albany Street, Oban

This is a later 19th-century terrace of five, three-bay houses located on Albany Street, Oban. Houses one and two (the western end, which originally served as a police station) were designed by David MacKintosh of Oban in 1881. A cell wing was added to the rear by Alexander Shairp in 1897 and subsequently altered by William Todd in 1909. House four was designed by Charles MacIntyre in 1907.

The architectural style is characterized by a base course and a moulded string course at the first floor level, with decorative loops over the downpipes and a cornice at the eaves. The building is constructed from bull-faced, grey granite squared and snecked rubble, with finely stugged yellow sandstone dressings, droved at the chamfered door openings, window surrounds, and splayed sills. It features round-arched entrance doorways with hoodmoulds, and round-arched windows at the first floor level. The rear elevation and jail wing are built with roughly squared rubble and stugged dressings.

The west-facing Albany Street elevation shows variation between the houses. Number one has asymmetrical bipartite windows flanking the doorway at ground floor level, and three narrow, evenly spaced round-arched windows at the first floor, aligning with the jail wing to the rear, and includes a blind fanlight above the entrance door. Sandstone quoins are visible at the north corner. Number three presents a symmetrical facade with bipartite windows to the outer bays at both ground and first floors. Number four has a near-symmetrical arrangement of three bays, with an additional round-arched doorway to the right of the third bay, overlapping sandstone quoins and matching the central doorway; it also features a hoodmould above. Number five is symmetrical with three bays evenly spaced at the first floor, and early 20th-century shopfronts with a doorway between them, topped by a projecting ashlar cornice.

The north elevation features a coursed granite rubble, piend-roofed single-story extension.

The rear (east) elevation includes a two-story and attic, four-bay jail wing projecting back from the terrace. A two-story stair tower is located on the south elevation of the jail wing. Segmental-arched ground floor window openings, barred for cells, and first-floor window openings are visible. The building's windows are timber sash and case with plate glass, while the external doors on Albany Street are timber and four-panelled, with glazing; a modern door replaces an earlier one at number 2.

The roof is grey-slated, running the length of the terrace, with a continuous pitch broken by skew copes at the south end of numbers two and four. A grey-slated mansard roof tops the jail wing, with slate-hung dormers on its north pitch. Piended roofs are present on the rear section of number two. Wrought-iron bars protect the ground floor windows of the jail wing. It has profiled cast-iron guttering and downpipes for the Albany Street elevation and jail wing. The chimneys have splayed copes and octagonal cans.