166, 168, 170, 172, 174 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

This is a large, five-story corner tenement block dated 1887 and designed by Edward Calvert. The building incorporates details reminiscent of Scottish 17th-century architecture. It is constructed of cream-coloured sandstone ashlar with a second-floor cill course, ornamental margins, and incised lintels to the second-floor windows. Incised aprons feature on the canted windows at the second and third floor levels. A heavy cornice sits above the third floor. The building features full-height canted windows that corbel to square, shaped, gableheaded dormers, and shaped dormerheads to the fourth-floor windows. The wallhead stacks are T-section, panelled, and incorporate a roundel motif above machicolations from the second floor, with chamfered reveals. Stone pilasters and capitals are present on the shopfronts, and the corner shop has a polished marble base.

The southwest elevation, facing Bruntsfield Avenue, is four bays wide, including a corner bay that projects from the adjoining tenement on a chamfered corner. It features a four-story canted angle window with a finialled ogee roof. A shop door is deeply set within the chamfered corner, and the two-bay shopfront has fluted pilasters with expressively carved, foliate capitals. The southeast elevation, facing Bruntsfield Place, displays repeating detailing similar to the corner shop, with timber shop fronts and recessed doors. Number 168 features a tiled shop entrance. The section of the elevation between numbers 166 and 174 is a six-bay tenement (excluding the corner bay) and includes a four-story canted window.

The building has plate glass timber sash and case windows, with smaller panes in the shop windows. A slate mansard roof covers the structure, and there are three wallhead and mutual stacks. The interiors were not inspected in 1992.