103-105 High Street, Edinburgh

This building at 97-99 High Street, Edinburgh, is a substantial tenement constructed around 1700 by James Smith of Whitehill and significantly altered in 1862 by Robert Paterson. The building replaces an earlier tenement by Smith, portions of which collapsed. A central pend provides access to Paisley Close, and a separate stair leads to the building at 107 High Street, which is listed separately.

The front of the building presents a symmetrical, four-storey, five-bay façade in the Scots Baronial style. A crowstepped wallhead features a corbelled apex stack. A prominent canted oriel window projects from the first floor. The front is constructed of squared and snecked stugged sandstone, painted on the ground and first floors, with polished stone dressings. The rear of the building comprises a six-storey tenement, representing the surviving portion of Smith’s original structure, with subsequent alterations; it is built of random rubble with raised ashlar margins and long and short quoins.

On the South (High Street) elevation, flanking shopfronts fill the ground floor, with the right-hand shop retaining original shouldered openings. A stair is set to the left, within a rope-moulded round-arched surround featuring decorative cast-iron handrails and a balustrade. The keystone of the pend to Paisley Close is carved with a portrait of a boy and an inscribed scroll. The oriel's corbelling is ornamented with foliate carving, a rope-moulded cill, and a machicolated, crenellated parapet. Windows are arranged in a 2-1-2-1 pattern on the upper floors. A moulded stepped string course sits above the second-floor windows. Upper floors have regularly placed windows with stop-chamfered, roll-moulded surrounds.

The North (rear) elevation is four storeys high with a basement, overlooking a small courtyard. It exhibits irregular fenestration and a small, corbelled, bowed oriel with a pointed-arched window. The rear is built of random coursed rubble with ashlar margins and raised cills, and includes stone relieving arches above lower windows.

The block to the rear rises for six storeys, including a basement, but its height has been reduced. The East elevation has three evenly spaced bays, while the West elevation has two bays, with paired stair windows on each floor and a larger single window. A rebuilt forestair leads to a timber-panelled rear door (in a 17th-century style). An adjoining slated outbuilding was constructed in 1977. A shop front is at ground level, entered below a late 18th or early 19th-century segmental-arch. The North elevation features several irregularly spaced blocked openings, indicating possible building phases.

The building has plate glass windows in the shops, later leaded glazing with pointed-arched astragals on the first floor, and replacement timber sash and case windows on the second and third floors, replicating the originals with 2-pane upper sashes and 4-pane lower sashes. The rear windows have 12-pane, replacement timber sash and case glazing. The building is roofed with grey slate, featuring a coped wallhead and end stacks; circular clay cans are present. Cast-iron rainwater goods are also a feature.

Internally, the first floor of Paterson’s tenement exhibits recessed windows with painted timber panelling and a Baronial-style chimneypiece inscribed "UBI BENE IBI DATRIA." Smith’s block includes a scale and platt stone close stair; treads have been re-levelled with concrete and linoleum, while the stairs to the attic may still contain original worn stone steps with rounded nosings.