52 Frederick Street, Edinburgh

52 Frederick Street in Edinburgh is a classical tenement building constructed between 1786 and 1792. It stands three storeys high with a basement and attic, featuring eight bays on a corner site. The building is made of broached cream sandstone ashlar with polished dressings. Notable architectural details include long and short quoins at the southern corner, a band course above the first floor, and an eaves cornice. The ground floor has been modified with a modern plate glass shop occupying the two left bays. There are corniced architraved doors leading to the third (which is en suite with the shopfront), fourth, and sixth bays from the left. The central door, which leads to the common stair, has a three-pane fanlight above it. The adjacent No 56 features a delicate metal fanlight, while the central right window on the ground floor has been enlarged. An incongruous full-width slate-hung dormer is present over the three left bays, featuring a pair of canted piend-roofed windows, and there is a canted piend-roofed dormer at the far right.

The gable is made of coursed rubble and rendered at the ground level, with windows located in the centre and left at both the ground and first floors. The building has 12-pane timber sash and case windows, ashlar coped skews, rendered stacks, and is topped with grey slates.

Inside, the ground floor has been modernised for the shop, which provides direct access to the original tight central stair, also accessible from the front door. The first floor contains a two-bay room with a grey marble Grecian chimneypiece. No 56 has been extended to the rear at both the basement and ground levels, featuring a hall with an inner pilastered screen and fanlight, along with a pilastered archway. The stair is aligned with plain square banisters. The former dining room includes an earlier 19th-century black slate chimneypiece and overdoors, while the southwest room has a chimneypiece with marble slips and a cast-iron grate. The former three-bay drawing room features a panelled dado and a fine white marble chimneypiece with engaged Ionic columns and a central tableau depicting Leda and the Swan. There is also a further front room on the first floor with a reeded chimneypiece and a cast-iron Gothic grate. A corridor has been created to the northwest, providing access to No 58, which is listed separately. Both flats in No 54 have been divided internally into two; the northern flat has mostly been refurbished, while the southern flat has not been seen since 1995.

The property is also adorned with cast-iron spearhead railings.