58 Frederick Street, Edinburgh

This is a substantial, 9-bay, 3-storey and attic former pair of houses with flats above, built between 1786 and 1792, and subsequently extensively altered internally. The building is located on Frederick Street, Edinburgh. It is constructed of droved cream sandstone ashlar with polished dressings and features a prominent eaves cornice. The front is a double bow, with a central architraved and corniced doorway with a 3-pane fanlight, flanked by Doric pilastered and corniced tripartite doorpieces also with plate glass fanlights (panelled and glazed doors are at No. 62); the outer bays are united as single bows and include cast-iron window guards. A piend-roofed tripartite dormer is present on the south side, and a full-width corniced slate-hung dormer extends across the north side and features a pair of off-centre canted windows. The windows are timber sash and case, with 12 panes to the south and plate glass to the north. The building has ashlar coped skews and cement-patched stone stacks.

The interior has been converted to single office use, with many of the principal rooms largely remaining, though with considerable alteration. At No. 58, a modern glazed screen divides the large inner hall. A curved cantilevered stone stair, with honeysuckle-patterned cast-iron banisters, rises on the central axis and is lit by a pilastered Venetian window with festoons above, set within a panelled archway. The former Dining Room retains an enriched circular ceiling and fluted overdoors with a dentilled cornice and figures, and a panelled dado survives within a subdivided corridor section. Swagged overdoors are found on the first floor. The former Drawing Room (now a Boardroom) also has a similar ceiling, featuring 19th-century painted roundels, a panelled dado, corresponding carved overdoors, and a chimneypiece displaying the Prince of Wales feathers and a central tableau. A room to the north contains a carved chimneypiece with figures. At No. 62, a blocked entrance hall leads to the former Dining Room, which retains a panelled dado, a carved and gesso chimneypiece with fluted pilasters and frieze, and corresponding overdoors, though these have been stripped. Silhouette landscapes of Edinburgh by David Hogg, dating from around 1970, are on two walls. The central stair has been mostly removed and is now boxed in; a corridor leads to the rear, and a first-floor landing gives access to the common stair to upper floors. An apsidally-ended former Drawing Room features bowed, corniced doors. The former double upper floors have surviving top-lit stairs—one straight with a half-landing to the south (with cast-iron turned and blocked balusters), and one curving to the north (with round iron balusters). A consoled archway is found in the hall to the south, and a timber stair leads to the garret to the north. Principal front rooms feature panelled dados, a black slate chimneypiece to the south, and a painted carved chimneypiece to the north. Rooms to the rear have tripartite windows, panelled dados, and matching chimneypieces, that to the north being subdivided, and that to the south displaying a Prince of Wales feathers escutcheon on the door.

The property is further distinguished by cast-iron spearhead railings and wrought-iron lamp standards.