39, 39A Queen Street and 64, 66 Frederick Street, Edinburgh

39 and 39A Queen Street and 64 and 66 Frederick Street in Edinburgh is a classical tenement building dating from 1789, with earlier 19th century shopfronts. It stands three storeys tall on a raised basement and attic, located on a corner site with shops at the ground level. The building is constructed of droved cream sandstone ashlar with polished dressings, featuring long and short rusticated quoins and an eaves cornice. The painted timber shopfronts, designed to resemble ashlar, include a full entablature.

On the Queen Street elevation, there are five bays. At the pavement and raised basement level, there are pairs of 3-bay and 2-bay shops with inset entrances framed by quadrant columns. These entrances have 2-leaf panelled storm doors, with the door at 39A featuring a panelled and glazed inner door with bevelled glass. The elevation also includes a pair of large piend-roofed canted dormers.

The Frederick Street elevation has a broad irregular four-bay gable with a single bay to the south. The corner shop at the basement level is located to the right. There are steps leading to two doors in the two left bays of the gable; the door to the right (No 66) is larger and serves a ground floor flat, featuring splayed reveals, pilasters, a fluted frieze with rosettes, and a cornice. It has a 9-panelled door with a plate glass fanlight. The door to the left (No 64) leads to a common stair and is architraved and corniced. There are also a pair of full-sized windows at the gablehead. The left bay has a canted oriel window at the ground level, which is topped with a cornice and blocking course, as well as a bipartite slate-hung box dormer.

The building features timber sash and case 12-pane windows, with plate glass on the ground floor along Queen Street and in the oriel window. The roof has ashlar coped skews, stone stacks, and is covered with grey slates.

Inside, the shops are either plain or modernised. The ground floor flat (No 66) has internal steps leading up to a hallway with a fluted pilastered arch. There are two rooms facing Queen Street: the western room is two bays wide with a sideboard recess facing the window, framed by fluted pilasters and a festooned frieze, along with plaster panelled walls, a panelled dado, and a simple carved chimneypiece. The eastern room is three bays wide with an additional window on the east wall next to a neo-Greek chimneypiece and a panelled dado. Another room features an oriel window with a finely carved chimneypiece supported by panelled pilasters bearing urns and a central foliate panel, along with a further small room that has a festooned chimneypiece.

The property is also adorned with cast-iron railings.