18, 20, 22 Howe Street, Edinburgh

18, 20, 22 Howe Street is a terrace tenement building in Edinburgh, designed by Robert Reid and William Sibbald between 1802 and 1808, with reconstructions by John Kinross in 1891. It is a three-storey structure with double attics and a basement, featuring seven bays in a near-symmetrical arrangement. The exterior is made of broached ashlar sandstone, with V-jointed rustication on the principal floor. There are band courses between the first and second floors, as well as between the second and third floors, and a cill course at the first and second floors. The third floor has a cornice that returns and terminates at the corners.

The principal elevation includes a centrally located window on the principal floor, flanked by a pair of doors. To the left, at No 20, there is an advanced bowed doorpiece from 1934 by John Jerdan, featuring a stone flight with flanking walls, an architraved surround, and a small pane rectangular fanlight above a blind frieze and cornice. To the right, at No 22, there is a round-arched doorpiece with a multi-panelled two-leaf door and a deep quasi-radial round-arched fanlight, leading to a shop with an advanced and corniced shop window in the outer right bay, made of plate glass and topped with a horizontal panel of decorative glazing. The outer left bay has a pilastered shop front, which includes a six-panel, two-leaf door in the penultimate bay from the left and a plate glass window to the left. The upper floors have regular fenestration.

The north elevation adjoins another terrace, which has a separate listing description for 24 Howe Street. The south elevation, facing Jamaica Street, is a four-bay facade predominantly made of random rubble with polished dressings. It features a modern two-leaf vertically boarded timber door with a plate glass rectangular fanlight in the penultimate bay from the left, flanked by plate glass windows, and a plate glass window in the outer right bay. The upper floors have irregular fenestration, including windows in the penultimate bay to the left and blind windows in the outer right bays at the first and second floors, as well as in the outer left bay at the second floor.

The building predominantly has 12-pane timber sash and case windows and a grey slate double Mansard roof with regularly spaced two-tiered box dormers. It also features cast-iron rainwater goods and gablehead stacks capped with circular cans. The interiors were not seen in 1997.