63-65 Frederick Street, Edinburgh

The building at 63-65 Frederick Street, Edinburgh, is a late 18th-century classical tenement, dating from around 1785, with a late 19th-century shopfront. It occupies a corner site and rises three storeys over a raised basement and attic. The exterior is constructed of droved cream sandstone ashlar with polished dressings, featuring long and short quoins, and an eaves cornice.

The basement has been built out with a glazed arcaded timber shopfront, incorporating slender columns, panelled pilasters, an entablature, and a solid parapet. The parapet formerly held a varied assortment of urns, lion heads, and eagles, and was originally adorned with busts of Robert Burns (removed in 1995) and Sir Walter Scott.

The Queen Street elevation has four bays, while the shopfront extends across six bays, with a centrally positioned recessed entrance. A full-width, slate-hung box dormer with an entablature tops the building. Large, canted windows with central pediments flank a central tripartite window, all with multi-pane upper sashes.

The Frederick Street elevation presents a four-bay gable, extended by two further bays to the south. The shopfront continues around the gable, terminating in an elaborate broken pedimented doorway with panelled pilasters, a two-leaf panelled door, and a porch leading to a ground floor flat. Surviving elements of the original door are incorporated into the elevation. A blank bay is centrally positioned on the gable, and two attic windows are located in the gablehead. A corniced, slate-hung dormer is situated on the south pitch of the gable, with windows facing south and west. Further south are two bays with steps leading to an architraved, corniced doorway with a plate glass fanlight and a two-leaf panelled door, and a slightly inset, piend-roofed tripartite dormer.

The building has timber sash and case windows with plate glass (multi-pane to dormers). Other features include ashlar coped skews, rendered stacks, and grey slates.

The interior of the shop contains good brass door furniture, cast-iron columns with finned and Corinthian capitals in the basement, lining boards to window spaces, and rooms with altered configurations. A compact, curving cantilevered common stair (at No. 63) serves the flats on the upper floors. The first and second-floor flats retain fine detailing, including panelled dados, carved chimneypieces to the north (Queen Street) rooms, and original secondary casements. Hallways feature stove niches and arches, while secondary rooms have corniced chimneypieces. Stone flags remain in the former kitchen on the first floor.

Cast-iron railings are present along Frederick Street.