26 Coates Gardens, Edinburgh

20 Coates Gardens in Edinburgh is a terrace of classically styled houses built between 1871 and 1876 by John Chesser. The building is two stories high with an attic and basement, featuring a balustrade and canted bay windows. The exterior is made of polished, channelled sandstone ashlar with polished dressings, and the basement is droved. Architectural details include a base course, a band course with a cornice at the canted bays on the ground floor, a string course on the first floor, and a banded eaves course topped with a cornice and balustrade. The dormers are alternately broad above the canted bays and narrow.

The front elevation consists of 20 two-bay houses, with some pairs slightly advanced, such as Nos 6 and 8, 14 and 16, and 22 and 24. Each house features a door with a fanlight at the center of the basement, a window in the canted bay to the left, and a doorpiece to the bay on the right at ground level, with a window above it on the first floor. The canted bay on the left has three lights on both the first and second floors.

The windows are 2-pane timber sash and case glazing, with dormers that are single-light and tripartite, mostly slate-hung on the sides. The roof is grey slate, with coped, polished, channelled sandstone ashlar stacks and tall, moulded octagonal cans. The building also features cast-iron rainwater goods.

Iron railings with spear-headed tops surround the street, set in coping, and lead to ashlar steps and oversailing entrance platts. There are plain railings for the steps leading down to the basement from the street, located to the left of each house.