Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, Edinburgh

Robert Rowand Anderson, 1885-90; sculpture by W Birnie Rhind,

C McBride, DW & W Grant Stevenson, John Hutchison and Pittendrigh MacGillivray. Imposing symmetrical 3-storey Spanish Gothic picture gallery and museum with copious sculptural decoration. Red Corsehill sandstone ashlar to principal elevations, coursed bull-faced rubble to secondary elevations. Pointed arch openings throughout; marble shafted columns to 1st floor windows. Base course; dentilled cornice; pierced parapet. Octagonal corner towers with slender buttresses and niches to each face containing figures; crocketed octagonal pinnacles (latter all recently reinstated).

QUEEN STREET ELEVATION: 9-bay. Arched and gabled 2-stage centrepiece at centre; shouldered door contained within tripartite doorpiece, itself within large single arch; 3 figure panels above support

4 arcaded windows surmounted by further sculptured panel; all contained within further arch and pediment; flanking pinnacled buttresses with figures in niches. Flanking wings with large windows at ground and paired windows at 1st floor with simple cusped tracery. 2nd floor virtually blind.

SIDE ELEVATIONS: 4-bay. 2 tiers of rectangular bipartite windows at ground; 1st floor as above; 2nd floor with rectangular cusped bipartite windows.

REAR ELEVATION: simplified version of front elevation.

Multi-pane timber casement and sash and case windows. Piended roof; grey slates; boiler stack distinctive Anderson component derived from continental precedents.

INTERIOR: lobby leads to 2-storey arcaded central Hall, with decorative painted frieze of celebrities from Scottish history by William Hole, 1887-1901; astrological ceiling. Flanked by pair of scale and platt stairs with vaulted landings. Principal galleries simple 2-aisled halls; further top-lit galleries on 2nd floor, together with galleried Library of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Stained glass window in E stair with medallion portraits of contemporary antiquaries by WG Boss, 1895, to Anderson?s design; armorial windows in Hall by Margaret Chilton and Marjorie Kemp, 1932.

LAMP STANDARDS: pair of elaborate octagonal gothic lamp standards with granite plinths flank entrance.