53, 55, 57 Bernard Street, Edinburgh

53, 55, 57 Bernard Street in Edinburgh is a three-storey, nine-bay tenement building designed in the Italian palazzo style, completed in 1868 and featuring the monogram of John Paterson. The ground floor is made of cream sandstone with polished ashlar, while the upper levels are constructed from stugged ashlar with polished dressings. The rear is built from squared and snecked rubble, and the sides are finished with coursed rubble.

The ground floor has rectangular shop openings with roll-moulded surrounds, and a deep cornice with alternating brackets and individual carvings of foliage and masks. Above the first floor, there is a carved string course, and at the second floor, a corbelled cill course. The eaves cornice is bracketted with panelled intervals between the brackets. The first and second floors feature stilted segmental-arched openings framed by colonettes with foliate capitals, and the arches have carved and moulded arrises.

On the front elevation, there is a round-arched doorway leading to the common stair at the center, which is corniced and supported by carved consoles, with a panelled door and a semi-circular plate glass fanlight. To the left, there are two shops with recessed doorways, while to the right, there is one shop and a pend that has been converted into a shop. The upper floors have regular fenestration and six dormers with rounded heads.

The rear elevation includes a tall central multi-pane stair window with blue border glazing, two bipartite windows with timber mullions on the outer left, and single windows in the remaining bays. There are also two single dormers.

The timber windows consist of fixed top sashes and tall two-pane lower sashes, with four-pane windows at the rear. The roof is covered with slate and features metal flashings, along with transverse and apex stacks on the northeast gable. The interior was not seen in 1993.