170-174 Great Junction Street, Leith, Edinburgh

W N Thomson, dated 1911. Large 4-storey corner tenement block with imposing domed corner clock tower, shops at ground floor and eclectic Baroque details. Cream sandstone, polished ashlar front, harled to rear and side. Continuous cornice above ground floor; to Taylor Gardens cill course at 1st floor; to Great Junction Street cill course at 2nd floor; eaves cornice with paired block brackets; shallow canted windows with crenellated parapets; chamfered reveals; shopfronts of red polished granite and black fascia, slender timber mullions, recessed doorways and Tiffany-style glass panels to upper third of display windows; ashlar mullions and transoms.

E (CORNER BLOCK) ELEVATION: 5-bay with chamfered centre bay framed by shallow corner pilasters with stylised carving. Shopfronts at ground floor altered. Doorway in chamfered corner; architraved bipartite window above at 1st floor flanked by carved heraldic panels of ?Leith Providence Co-operative Society AD 1911? to bays to either side.

3 centre bays slightly advanced at 2nd and 3rd floor over bracketted corbel with transomned bipartite windows at 2nd floor; keystoned windows with shouldered architraves and garlanded aprons at 3rd floor; tall parapet with shaped crenellations, octagonal leaded tower with Ionic columns and alternating clock faces and blank cartouches, finialled ogival textured dome. Outer bays with segmental-arched cavetto-moulded keystoned giant order comprising of tripartite windows at 1st, 2nd (transomned and with stained glass) and 3rd floor; parapet with bipartite arches and cartouche panels.

SW (GREAT JUNCTION STREET) ELEVATION: 10-bay; panelled common stair doorways with dentilled cornices; shopfronts mostly altered. 3-storey canted windows to 2 centre and outer bays; single windows to remaining bays.

NW (TAYLOR GARDENS) ELEVATION: 10-bay as above recessed from corner block. Projecting flat-roofed shopfronts, (unaltered, shop doorway to left with 2-leaf door with semi-circular lights with radial iron astragals) except for segmental-arched pend (now altered) and common stair doorway to outer left.

W (REAR) ELEVATION: harled; complex roofscape of varying levels with roof garden/drying green over saloons to Great Junction Street shops.

Timber sash and case windows, originally small-pane upper sashes, 2-pane lower sashes, now partly replaced by plate glass and modern glazing. Slate roof with metal flashings; tall single and paired corniced transverse stacks.

INTERIOR: tiled closes; rest not seen 1993.