3, 5, 7 And 9 Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh

3, 5, 7 and 9 Jeffrey Street in Edinburgh is a long tenement building constructed between 1888 and 1892 by architects James Lessels and Harry Ramsay Taylor. This four-storey and attic structure follows the curving line of Jeffrey Street and features Scots Baronial detailing. It is stepped to accommodate the slope of the site, with a basement level at the rear. The building is treated as five individual blocks, each with four or five bays, and includes two and three-bay shopfronts, some of which have been altered. The ground floor has stop-chamfered and roll-moulded, shoulder-arched openings.

The exterior is made of squared and snecked bull-faced yellow sandstone with polished margins, while the ground floor is finished in painted ashlar. A broad band course separates the ground and first floors, and there are moulded cill courses on the first, second, and third floors. The windows are set in tabbed surrounds and are corniced at the first floor.

On the northeast elevation facing Jeffrey Street, the blocks numbered 3-9 and 11-15 are symmetrical with central wallhead gables, and the gables at 11-15 are corbelled out. A dummy machicolated corbel table rises from the third floor, featuring a tourelled wallhead stack on the outer right. The blocks numbered 17-23 and 25-31 present a five-bay asymmetrical design with a wallhead stack on the centre/left. The blocks numbered 33-37 have a four-bay layout with a central wallhead stack and a small corbelled corner turret at the outer right, which includes an arrow slit and a conical roof with a finial, along with dummy machicolations at the third floor right cill.

The windows are plate glass in timber sash and case style, and the shopfronts also feature plate glass. Some original panelled timber single two-leaf doors are present, with shouldered two and four-pane fanlights above, and timber panelling in the entrance vestibules. The roofs are pitched with grey slate, featuring large flat sections that are leaded and felted. The apex stacks are coped, with some having been replaced, and there are circular clay cans and rectangular cupolas. The building also includes cast-iron rainwater goods.

The interior of the third-floor flat at No 13/6, viewed in 2002, features a living room with a decorative ceiling rose, a plain cornice, and a cast-iron firegrate with a tiled insert and a black and green marble surround. The bedroom has a decorative painted cast-iron corner chimneypiece and a plain cornice.

At the rear, there is a coped random rubble boundary wall enclosing drying greens, which serves as the boundary to Hope's Court.