York Buildings, Queen Street, Edinburgh

York Buildings, located on Queen Street in Edinburgh, were designed by Robert Raeburn in 1875, with a porch added by Herbert Ryle from the Office of Works in 1919. This building features three storeys and an attic, with a near-symmetrical rectangular plan typical of stripped French Empire style, serving as shops and offices. The exterior is finished in polished sandstone ashlar, showcasing an arcaded ground floor, a band course above, and bracketed cills for the architraved windows on the first floor. The second floor has segmented arched windows with a cill course, followed by another band course and a bracketed cornice. The roof features round-headed dormers and Mansard pavilion roofs.

On the south elevation, there are advanced five-bay pavilions at both the left and right ends, with four dormers and a central section of the pavilion roof that is raised and decorated with iron brattishing. The central block has 14 bays. To the outer right, there is a single-storey, flat-roofed porch made of channelled ashlar, which includes a round-arched doorway with a tripartite doorpiece and a swan-neck pediment, leading to a two-leaf panelled door and a parapet with a raised central block.

The east elevation connects to 2 Dublin Street (which has a separate listing) and features a porch at ground level, with single windows and dormers in the outer bays above and a central wallhead stack. The west elevation has a single window at ground level and three windows on each floor above, with shouldered wallhead stacks at the outer left and right, and two dormers in between.

The building has plate glass timber sash and case windows on the first and second floors as well as in the dormers, and the ground floor features plate glass shop windows with timber aprons. The roof is covered with grey slate, and there are corniced wallhead stacks and a ridge stack.