83-89 Henderson Street, Edinburgh

This is a four-storey corner tenement building located at 83-89 Henderson Street in Edinburgh, dated and signed by James Simpson in 1891. The building features an exuberant design with a curved corner oriel and shops on the ground and part of the first floor. The front elevations are made of red sandstone with polished ashlar, while the rear is constructed from squared and snecked cream rubble with red dressings.

The building has a base course and a cornice above the ground floor, which is broken by small pediments, along with a cill course at the second and third floors that includes bracketed cills. It features rusticated stylised quoins and large shoulder-arched display openings on the ground and first floors, divided by timber mullions and nook-shafts at the ground level. The taller first-floor windows are separated by moulded pilasters, which include a foliate impost band and carved heraldic shields. The third-floor windows break the eaves in pedimented dormerheads, featuring star insets and boldly carved ashlar finials, along with ashlar mullions.

On the northeast elevation, known as The Shore, there are three bays, including a curved corner bay on the outer left. This elevation has a broad doorway in a chamfered angle, a three-storey curved oriel that is corbelled at the first floor with tripartite windows, and an ogival finialled roof covered with partly polychrome fishscale slating and a weathervane. The central bay has single windows and a shaped dormerhead, while the right bay features bipartite windows with a semi-circular shell pediment.

The southeast elevation, facing Henderson Street, has four bays, with a shop window in the centre that was formerly a pend. Above this, there is a bay to the left of centre with bipartite windows and a semi-circular shell pediment. The bays to the right of centre and the outer left have single windows with shaped pediments, while the outer right bay is blank, featuring a date stone panel at the second floor with a semi-circular pediment and strapwork apron.

The northwest elevation has a gabled flank with a broad asymmetrical apex stack, along with single and paired windows and a broad wallhead stack. There is also a two- and single-storey flat-roofed brick-built extension with round-headed windows in the re-entrant angle.

The building has four-pane timber sash and case windows, a slate roof with metal flashings, and includes apex and wallhead stacks. The eaves gutters are moulded, with gutterheads and brackets. Inside, the principal rooms on the first floor feature elaborate cornices and compartmental ceilings.