Leith Sailor's Home, 1, 2, 3, 4 Tower Place, Leith, Edinburgh

The Leith Sailor's Home, located at 1, 2, 3, and 4 Tower Place, Leith, Edinburgh, is a large, asymmetrical, L-shaped building constructed in a Baronial style between 1882 and 1885 by Charles Stuart Still Johnston. The building was later converted into a hotel in 1992-4. It occupies a corner site and incorporates an engaged, five-stage clock tower and shops at ground floor level, along with a single-storey hall to the rear.

The building is primarily constructed of cream sandstone, comprising squared and snecked stugged rubble with polished dressings. The northwest and southwest elevations feature ashlar shopfronts with a plain frieze and continuous cornice. A balustraded parapet is present on the northwest elevation, and the first-floor windows are transomed. A corbel course runs above the second floor, and the third-floor windows break the eaves in gabled dormerheads. The attic windows are accentuated by Germanic-style gabled dormers. Other notable features include crowstepped gables, chamfered reveals, ashlar mullions, corbelled corner turrets, and a flagpole.

The northwest (front) elevation has eight bays, with a three-bay tower at the centre. The tower’s round-arched, corniced doorway is flanked by transomed windows, featuring an angel-head keystone, scrolled brackets, and a datestone (1883) above the door. Carved spandrels with rope mouldings are also present. The first floor features a bipartite window flanked by single windows, all architraved. The fifth stage of the tower incorporates two pedimented windows and a clock face on each side. A corbelled crenellated parapet rises above, complete with canon spouts, angle bartizans with trefoil gunloops, and a southeast bartizan crowned by a caphouse to the stair, which has an ogival finialled roof.

The southwest (Tower Street) elevation exhibits eight bays, with three advanced gabled bays with an apex stack and corner turrets at the third floor. The right-hand side of the elevation features a two-bay later brick addition.

The northeast (rear) elevation includes a single-storey, rectangular-plan hall with a gambrel roof, skylights, and a fine pagoda-style, two-tier ventilator to Tower Street Lane. A gabled end elevation of the Tower Place range displays single windows, while the rear elevations of the main ranges feature irregularly-spaced single and bipartite windows; a nebulous gable is visible on the northwest range and a rectangular projection extends from the outer left of the southwest range.

The building has modern sash and case replacement windows with plate glass glazing. The roof is slate with metal flashings and red terracotta finials, and there are four apex stacks and a wallhead stack to the rear of the southwest elevation. The interior was not inspected in 1993.