51, 53, 55, 55A Frederick Street, Edinburgh

51, 53, 55, and 55A Frederick Street in Edinburgh is a classical tenement building constructed between 1786 and 1792, with a later 19th-century projecting shopfront at the ground level. The building is three stories high, with a basement and attic, and features ten bays. It is made of droved cream ashlar sandstone with polished dressings, and has a rusticated ground floor with long and short quoins. The building is topped with a mutulated cornice and a blocking course.

The fourth bay from the south is set back and contains an architraved and corniced doorway leading to a common stair (No 53), which is topped by a three-pane fanlight. The ground floor of No 51 has been altered and features a projecting pilastered and corniced four-bay shopfront. This shopfront includes a three-bay section to the right of an arched doorway that leads to the first floor, which has a panelled door and a plate glass fanlight. The building also has a full-width slate-hung box dormer with single and tripartite windows.

The six northern bays (No 55) have a rusticated ground floor and a Roman Doric columned doorpiece at the fourth bay from the north, with the main door being flat. The basement includes three large segmental-arched windows to the south of the stair, with a door and window to the right. There are two piend-roofed dormers, with the left dormer being canted.

The gable is constructed of rubble and has windows on each floor at the center. The ground floor is rendered, and there is a single-storey extension at the rear. The building features timber sash and case 12-pane windows, ashlar coped skews, and rebuilt coped ashlar stacks, with a brick mutual stack to the north, all covered with grey slates.

The interior of the building has been largely modernized. Additionally, there are cast-iron spearhead railings surrounding the property.