16, 17, 18, 19, 20 Mcleod Street, Edinburgh

16, 17, 18, 19, 20 McLeod Street in Edinburgh is a four-storey, eight-bay tenement building constructed in 1897 by the Public Works Office. It has a symmetrical H-plan design and originally housed 32 one or two-room dwellings, each with four WCs, two sinks, and two washhouses per floor. The building is made of squared and snecked rubble with red sandstone dressings, featuring long and short stugged quoins, ashlar window margins, and a red ashlar band course between the floors, with a grey base course. Each floor is identical.

On the west elevation facing McLeod Street, there are six recessed bays at the center with concrete balconies supported by red cast iron brackets, adorned with blue and green cast-iron railings, and a glass canopy above the balcony. The outer bays on each floor feature 12-pane glazed doors with rectangular fanlights, with windows located between these doors and a pair of central internal staircase openings, where the left staircase ascends and the right descends. A wooden door leads to a store at the center, and a sympathetic three-bay rubble entrance porch has been added in front of the stair. External steps with railings provide access to the ground floor flats.

The north and south elevations each have four bays, with the outer bay to the east being blank and featuring a wallhead stack. The east (rear) elevation consists of three widely spaced central bays flanked by narrow three-bay projections on each side, which include small balconies in the reentrant angle, providing access to the blank outer pavilion bays.

The building has been restored to feature original timber sash and case astragal windows throughout. It has a piend roof over the main block and pavilions, topped with a square cupola-like ventilator at the center, covered in grey slates. Large stacks are coped and dressed similarly to the rest of the building. A low rubble wall with saddleback coping is present at the front, although the railings are missing.