3 Lansdowne Crescent, Edinburgh

3 Lansdowne Crescent is a terrace of ten rusticated townhouses built in 1865 by Robert Matheson. The terrace includes corner pavilions at numbers 1 and 9, which connect to 28 Palmerston Place and 23 and 25 Grosvenor Street respectively, and those connecting buildings are separately listed. The building is constructed from polished, channelled sandstone ashlar with polished dressings and V-jointed rustication to the ground floor. The basement is of droved sandstone.

The design is of two storeys with an attic and basement, with a bowed main block and three-storey and basement corner pavilions. A base course and banded cill course mark the first floor, and the pavilions have dentilled cornices. Bracketed block cills are present on the second floor pavilion windows, and the main block features a panelled eaves course with brackets to the pavilion cornices, a banded eaves course, cornice, and stone balustrade. The doorpieces have consoled cornices (dentilled at number 1), panelled framing pilasters, a circular motif to lugged moulded margins, and timber panelled doors with rectangular fanlights. Moulded margins frame the pavilion windows and the first-floor windows of the main block. Each house has a pair of segmental-arched dormers, though a flat-roofed modern replacement dormer is present on the right of number 8.

The northwest (principal) elevation features corner blocks at numbers 1 and 9, which are slightly advanced. Number 1 has a basement door with a fanlight and flanking window, with windows to the remaining basement bays. The ground floor has a 2-leaf, 2-panel timber door with a rectangular fanlight and a doorpiece. Number 9 has a modern replacement window and a narrow flanking light beneath the overhanging entrance platform, alongside a basement door, a window, and a further window. The main block (numbers 2-8) is a 23-bay block, with number 2 being five bays and the rest three-bay sections. Basement doors with fanlights and flanking windows are present in each house, while the ground floor features a 4-panel timber door with a rectangular fanlight to the left of each three-bay section (centrally located in the five-bay section, number 2). The first floor has windows in all bays. A consoled stone balcony with scroll-shaped wrought-iron railings is above the door to number 2.

Windows are timber sash and case with 2-pane glazing. The roof is grey slate, piended to the pavilions. Chimneys are a mixture of channelled sandstone ashlar and rendered, coped stacks with cylindrical cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods are in place. Fleur-de-lys iron railings are set within coping along the street and to the ashlar steps and oversailing entrance platts; plain railings are to the steps to the basement, which are accessible from the street to the right of each house.