137-143 Great Junction Street, Edinburgh

The Post Office at 133 Great Junction Street in Edinburgh is a building designed by James Simpson, dated and signed 1879. It consists of a pair of nearly identical four-storey and attic seven-bay tenements situated on a corner site, featuring shops on the ground floor. Originally, these buildings served as worker housing for Crabbie & Co. and include vaulted basements with underground connections.

The exterior is constructed from cream sandstone, with squared and snecked stugged rubble and polished dressings, while the rear is finished in squared and snecked rubble. The shopfronts are basket-arched and topped with a plain band course. The first, second, and third floors have cill courses and bracketed cills, with lintels that curve over floral roundels on the first and second floors. The building features an eaves cornice and pedimented dormers.

On the northeast elevation facing Great Junction Street, there are 14 bays symmetrically arranged around the center, displaying a regular pattern of single and bipartite windows. Each tenement has common stair doorways at the center, with No. 129 featuring a two-leaf panelled door and a three-pane fanlight. The shopfronts on either side include Nos. 125, 127, 137, and 141, which are boxed in. The elevations above have slightly advanced center and inner flanking bays, supported by scrolled brackets that clasp the ground floor cill course. There are hoodmoulded panels with floral carvings initialled "J C" on the second floor, along with shouldered wallhead stacks. The dormers above the single windows are canted over the bipartite windows.

The northwest elevation facing Bonnington Road consists of six bays, including a slightly recessed curved corner bay on the outer left, detailed similarly with single windows and a curved roof. The bay to the left of the corner is blank and features a panel with the date and architect's name, along with a shouldered wallhead stack. The remaining bays have single windows and dormers.

The southeast elevation has a truncated gable with paired stacks and single windows at the center. The rear elevation features single windows and plain dormers, with the return elevation of the corner tenement gabled and topped with an apex stack, as well as a large modern trompe l'oeil mural.

The building primarily has four-pane timber sash and case windows, with some plate glass glazing and modern replacement windows. The roof is a slate mansard style, featuring three apex and three wallhead stacks, along with moulded eaves gutters. The interior was not seen in 1993.