26, 27, 28 Hillside Crescent, Edinburgh

This is a long, classical tenement building dating from the 1880s, designed by John Chesser. It occupies a prominent position on Hillside Crescent in Edinburgh, with a five-bay elevation to Wellington Street. The building is four stories high and features a common stair and main door flats.

The principal, south-facing elevation to Hillside Crescent presents a near-symmetrical facade, sixteen bays wide (fourteen bays on the ground floor), with advanced seven-bay and nine-bay (eight bays on the ground floor) pavilions positioned on the left and right respectively. A building, 1-3 Brunton Place, adjoins the right side. The building is constructed of polished ashlar with coursed rubble and dressed margins to the rear. Architectural details include a base course, a dividing band between the ground and first floors, moulded cill courses to the first and second floors, a modillioned cornice cill band to the third floor, eaves cornice, and a blocking course. The fenestration is largely regular, with architraves to ground floor (Wellington Street elevation only), first, second, and third floor windows (excluding bay windows), and aprons to first-floor windows.

On the ground floor of the main elevation, timber-panelled doors with letterbox fanlights are located in the fourth, eleventh, eighteenth and twenty-fifth bays from the left, set within doorpieces framed by two engaged fluted Greek Doric columns supporting an entablature and pediment that breaks the first floor cill course. Flanking these doorways are groupings consisting of narrow windows with extended cills, timber-panelled doors with letterbox fanlights framed by Greek Doric pilasters and projecting entablatures, and windows with recessed surrounds and aprons. There is an additional window in the far-right bay, located below the third-floor cill course.

The west-facing Wellington Street elevation features a four-story, basement canted bay on the far left; it is characterised by tripartite windows with stop-chamfered mullions. A blind window is located on the far right. The first-floor windows have cornices, while a returned modillioned cornice sits below the third-floor cill course on the far right.

The building has plate glass in timber sash and case windows. The pitched roof to the front and rear is covered in graded grey slates, with stone skews and skewputts. Twelve ridge stacks, predominantly corniced ashlar with octagonal cans, rise from the Hillside Crescent elevation, while a shouldered wallhead stack to the right, a central ridge stack, and a gablehead stack to the far left are present on the Wellington Street elevation, all corniced and rendered with circular cans.