75-81 Henderson Street, Edinburgh

Dated and signed James Simpson, 1891. Exuberant 4-storey 10-bay tenement with shops at ground floor and free Renaissance details. Red sandstone, polished ashlar to front elevation, squared and snecked cream rubble with red dressings to rear. Base course; shopfronts with continuous fascia and cornice, shouldered-arch openings to shopfronts with rounded reveals, recessed doorways and slender timber mullions

(No 83); cill course and bracketted cills at 1st and 3rd floor; 1st floor windows corniced; 3rd floor windows breaking eaves in pedimented dormerheads with trefoil insets and boldly carved ashlar finials; ashlar mullions; corniced stacks with chamfered arrises.

SE (FRONT) ELEVATION: pend to outer left bay; common stair doorway with replacement door and narrow segmental-arched plate glass fanlight. Single windows to bays to outer left; blank bay with wallhead stack corbelled at 2nd floor from strapwork apron, pedimented panel (James Simpson, architect) with bracketted cill at 3rd floor. Next bay with bipartite windows to all floors, at 3rd floor with semi-circular pediment with radial carving. Bay to left of centre with single windows. Bay to right of centre with 3-storey canted window corbelled above ground floor, pedimented centre light at 3rd floor and pyramidal finialled roof. To right bipartite windows as above. Wallhead stack as above (except for entwined letters to panel). Single windows to outer right.

NW (REAR) ELEVATION: single and paired windows, some blocked at ground floor; 3 wallhead stacks, 2 framing stair windows.

4-pane timber sash and case windows. Slate roof with metal flashings; 5 wallhead stacks (see above), mutual stacks, some with gabletted coping. Moulded eaves gutters, gutterheads and brackets.

INTERIOR: not seen 1993.