University Students' Union, Teviot Row House, Bristo Square, Edinburgh

University Students' Union, Teviot Row House, Bristo Square, Edinburgh

A 4-storey university amenity building with attic and basement, designed by Sydney Mitchell and Wilson between 1887 and 1889. The main building adopts the 16th century Scots palace style, featuring Holyrood Palace-type drum towers and large late Gothic traceried windows beneath coped crowstepped and pinnacled gables. The structure is constructed in squared coursed sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings.

In 1902–1905, the same architects added a 2- and 3-storey, 5-bay wing to the northwest in 16th century style. A later Modernist extension to the southwest was added in 1962, designed by Sir William Hardie Kininmonth of Rowand Anderson, Kininmonth and Paul, with Blyth & Blyth as structural engineers and Arnott McLeod & Co as contractors.

The principal north elevation is symmetrical, centred on a coped crowstepped gable end with four bays flanked by towers. An advanced pointed arched crenellated stone porch with two-leaf timber boarded door and octagonal buttresses marks the entrance, flanked by bipartite transomed and mullioned windows. Above, bipartite traceried, transomed and mullioned pointed arched windows occupy the façade, with tall windows at second-floor level. The 1902 extension projects to the right, incorporating a 3-storey gabled and turreted bay to the left and a 2-storey four-bay section to the far right, with transomed and mullioned tripartite windows and an octagonal ventilator.

The east elevation features slender circular-plan towers at the corners and an advanced crenellated 2-bay four-storey section to the left, with a ventilator to the ridge. The south rear elevation displays a 3-storey canted 3-light window section to the centre, with the 1962 extension positioned further left.

The interior retains a good original decorative scheme with fine tracery detail woodwork, plasterwork, paired turret stairs, and panelled rooms of 16th century character, though later alterations have created various bar and restaurant spaces. The first-floor reading room leads via paired circular stairs with fine ribbed ceilings to the second-floor panelled hallway and Debating Hall, which features a curve-fronted balcony to the north end and a shallow pitched hammerbeam roof. The Servitors flat extends across the third floor into the turrets with plain fireplaces. The 1902–1905 extension contains a ground-floor galleried library with fitted glass-fronted timber bookcases (converted to a bar in 2006), a first-floor Middle Reading Room with fireplace, and a Dining Room with paired marble and timber fireplaces with integral bust niches to either end, beneath a tunnel vault ceiling with decorative vine banding.

The 1962 extension to the south comprises two storeys on concrete columns with a compartment beneath, arranged in a 3 by 3 structural bay rectangular plan. The reinforced concrete construction features white board-marked concrete external walls, with the basement compartment finished in white roughcast render and a wrought-iron boundary fence. Fenestration consists of three glazed wrap-around bands with no corner supports, with upstand beams forming divisions at second-floor level and four domed roof lights inset between upright columns. Support columns are of cruciform plan at the lower section and circular plan at the upper section, with inverted conical heads projecting beyond the beam edge.

The 1962 extension interior is accessed from the main building via Park Place. The upper-level dining room features a gallery, conical-headed board-marked columns, Parana pine linings, and hardwood block floors. Gallery stairs rest on board-marked concrete spines with hardwood treads and balustrades without risers. A servery connects to the kitchens in the old building via a flying link on the north. The lower-level billiard room is accessed by a flying stair within the earlier building, lined with horizontal Parana pine boarding and finished with linoleum and rubber floors. A carpenter's workshop occupies the ground-level basement.