75-81 Henderson Street, Edinburgh

75-81 Henderson Street in Edinburgh is an exuberant four-storey, ten-bay tenement building, dated and signed by architect James Simpson in 1891. The building features shops on the ground floor and showcases free Renaissance architectural details. The front elevation is constructed of red sandstone with polished ashlar, while the rear is made of squared and snecked cream rubble with red dressings.

The ground floor has a base course with shopfronts that include a continuous fascia and cornice. The shopfronts feature shouldered-arch openings with rounded reveals, recessed doorways, and slender timber mullions. The first and third floors have cill courses and bracketed cills. The first-floor windows are corniced, and the third-floor windows break the eaves in pedimented dormerheads that have trefoil insets and boldly carved ashlar finials. The building also has ashlar mullions and corniced stacks with chamfered arrises.

On the southeast (front) elevation, there is a pend to the outer left bay and a common stair doorway with a replacement door and a narrow segmental-arched plate glass fanlight. The outer left bays have single windows, while there is a blank bay with a wallhead stack corbelled at the second floor from a strapwork apron. A pedimented panel, indicating James Simpson as the architect, is located at the third floor with a bracketed cill. The next bay features bipartite windows on all floors, with a semi-circular pediment and radial carving at the third floor. There is a bay to the left of center with single windows and a bay to the right of center with a three-storey canted window that is corbelled above the ground floor, featuring a pedimented center light at the third floor and a pyramidal finialled roof. The right side has bipartite windows similar to the previous bay, and a wallhead stack with entwined letters on the panel. The outer right has single windows.

The northwest (rear) elevation has single and paired windows, some of which are blocked at the ground floor, along with three wallhead stacks and two stair windows. The building features four-pane timber sash and case windows and a slate roof with metal flashings. There are five wallhead stacks, mutual stacks, some with gabletted coping, and moulded eaves gutters, gutterheads, and brackets.

The interior was not seen in 1993.