22-34 Bread Street, Edinburgh

22-34 Bread Street is a Grade A listed building comprising interconnected blocks of former department stores built between 1892 and 1937, now undergoing conversion to hotel, bars, restaurant and accommodation use.

The central block to Bread Street was designed by John McLachlan in 1892, with an identical section added to its right by TP Marwick in 1898. Together they form a 10-bay palazzo-style department store in polished ashlar. Each bay features plate glass to the ground floor, separated by cast-iron pilasters (though the ground floor arrangement has been altered). The 1st floor has arcaded windows—each consisting of two lights with a lunette above—flanked by prominent keystones and coupled Doric pilasters to the outer bays. The 2nd floor has blocked jamb windows with cornices and bipartite sashes. The 3rd floor contains smaller bipartite windows with Doric columnar mullions dividing and flanking them. A moulded cill course runs beneath each level, and a mutuled cornice crowns the façade below modern dormers to the attic.

The V-shaped block to Bread Street and East Fountainbridge was designed by TP Marwick and completed in 1914. This is a 4-storey and attic Beaux Arts and Baroque department store. The Bread Street elevation presents 5 bays in polished cream ashlar sandstone, with channelling to the outer bays. The ground and 1st floors feature 2-storey glazed openings to the 3 centre bays, framed in red granite with channelled ashlar architraves. At the 3rd and 4th floors, windows are grouped 3 and 3 in recessed panels flanked by coupled Doric pilasters, with an entablature supported on decorative brackets between them. Projecting corner bays contain wide full-height corniced glazed entrances framed in red granite. Diocletian windows with prominent keystones light the 1st floors of these bays; windows to the 2nd and 3rd floors are grouped 2 and 2 in recessed panels with corniced brackets below. At attic level, the 3 centre bays have windows with swept reveals in segmental-headed decorative dormerheads, while the outer bays have bipartite windows in scrolled dormerheads. A moulded cill course marks the 2nd floor; a mutuled cornice and ashlar parapet crown the façade.

The East Fountainbridge elevation is identical in treatment to Bread Street but configured differently: the centre has only 2 bays, and the left side has 2 narrow asymmetrical bays. The ashlar is polished throughout with a plain eaves cornice. A service entrance occupies a channelled arched surround with a Diocletian window above. Above this are 2 stone-mullioned windows—4 to the right bay, lighting the staircase—with decorative wrought-iron grilles to the ground floor windows.

The bowed corner block has a moulded eaves band at ground level, a cill course at the 2nd floor, and a dentilled cornice at the 3rd. A deep red granite base course supports channelled ashlar above it. The 1st floor has segmental-headed openings; the 2nd floor has swept reveals in polished ashlar; the 3rd and 4th floors feature vertically paired windows between coupled giant Doric columns. The drum carries key-blocked segmental-headed windows below a ribbed copper dome.

Numbers 28 and 30 Bread Street were designed by T Waller Marwick in 1937 as a 3-storey, 3-bay Modernist furniture showroom with a steel frame and precast concrete floors. The ground floor has a plate glass shop front with 3 two-leaf glazed doors (the ground floor arrangement has been altered). Above rises a 3-storey curtain wall of glass subdivided by bronze astragals, cantilevered from a grid of concrete members and framed in polished granite. Behind the glass, later partitions now conceal the former sales floors.

The rear elevation to the south shows brick walls to the older blocks, some finished in white glazed tiles. The projecting rear of the 1937 Marwick block features concrete construction with continuous glazing to each sales floor and a 4-storey window with astragals serving a stair tower.