40 Melville Street, Edinburgh

32 Stafford Street in Edinburgh is an impressive classical terrace building designed by Robert Brown, built between 1825 and 1830, with Nos. 28 Melville Street and 32 Stafford Street completed in 1859. The terrace features a unified façade of three-storey and basement townhouses, each with main-door and common stair flats. At the corner, there is a taller five-bay block with advanced end bays to the east, which returns with four bays to Stafford Street. The basement area includes some vaulted cellars and retaining walls.

The building is constructed of sandstone ashlar, which is droved at the basement and vermiculated at the corner block, with a channelled ground floor. It has a banded base course, banded cill and string courses at the first floor, a corniced cill course at the second floor, and a corniced eaves course. The corner block features a parapet with a balustrade at the centre. The doorways have plain rectangular fanlights, and the outer ground floor bays at the corner block have a recessed round arched surround. The first-floor windows have architraved, bracketed, and pedimented surrounds, with corniced surrounds to the outer bays. The return to Stafford Street mirrors this design but includes semi-circular balconies at the first floor. The building also has cast-iron lamp standards.

The windows predominantly feature plate glass in timber sash and case. The roof is a double pitch M-section covered with grey slates, and there are corniced ashlar gable ends and ridge stacks with modern clay cans. The building includes single and three-bay cast iron balconies, as well as cast-iron railings on ashlar coping stone edging the basement recess.

Inside, the interior is characterized by a highly decorative classical scheme with detailed cornicing. It has been converted for office and residential use in 2008. The building also features decorative cast-iron arches with lamp holders, glass lamp bowls at Nos. 30 and 40, and an original cast-iron serpent lamp extinguisher on the railings.