5 Palmerston Place, Edinburgh

19 Palmerston Place in Edinburgh is a terrace of three-storey and basement, three-bay townhouses designed by John Lessels between 1870 and 1876. The buildings feature a unified façade with an advanced nine-bay centerpiece. Constructed from sandstone ashlar, the basement is droved, while the ground floor is channelled. The entrance platts extend over the basements, and there is a banded base course. The first and second floors have a banded cill course that is bracketed at the windows on the second floor. The corniced eaves course adds to the architectural detail, along with architraved and corniced doorpieces and rectangular fanlights.

The first floor showcases consoled stone balconies on scrolled brackets with cast-iron railings, and the segmental arched windows are also architraved, consoled, and corniced, with small roundels in alternate bays. The second floor features architraved surrounds.

On the north elevation, there are three storeys with two bays at the centre of a mostly blank elevation, and a two-storey corniced canted bay off-centre to the right. The ground floor is channelled ashlar, with large recessed panels on the first and second floors. The eaves course is corniced, and the canted bay has moulded architraved surrounds.

The windows are predominantly plate glass set in timber sash and case frames. The building has a corniced ashlar gable end and ridge stacks, with a double pitch M-section roof covered in grey slates. There are cast-iron railings on the ashlar cope edging the basement recess to the street, along with cast-iron balconies on the first floor and cast-iron rainwater goods.

Inside, the interior is characterized by a decorative classical scheme featuring fine plasterwork, ceiling roses, and well-detailed cornicing.