Institute For The Blind, 59 Magdalen Yard Road, Dundee

The Institute for the Blind, located at 59 Magdalen Yard Road in Dundee, was designed by Alexander Johnston and completed in 1883. This prominently sited Gothic-style alms-house is built of rubble with contrasting long and short ashlar dressings and consists of two stories.

The main front features nine bays with buttresses and advanced gabled wings. At the center, there is a slightly advanced ashlar gable that includes a moulded chamfered Tudor arched hood-moulded doorway situated between slit windows. The ground floor has corbelled bays at lintel level, with a trefoil-pierced band course that transitions into a gabled string course, topped with a trefoil and a finial above the door. The first floor has two windows, and the gable displays an inscription, skewputts, a gablet, and a fleur de lis finial.

On either side of the main block, there are two linking bays with chamfered windows; the ground floor features bipartite windows, while the first floor has single windows with buttresses in between. The advanced two-bay gabled wings have angle and ceiling buttresses. The left side has bipartite windows on both floors, with a gablet that features a quatrefoil and a fleur de lis finial. The right side is larger and more advanced, with a bipartite window on the ground floor and cusped Gothic cross windows with hood-moulds on the first floor, along with a gablet that has a quatrefoil and fleur de lis finial.

The building has modern glazing patterns and is topped with slate roofs. A central pyramidal-roofed fleche has a louvred lower portion and is slated above, finished with a wrought-iron finial.

There are slightly later additions in the same style on either side of the main block, including a one-storey, one-bay bipartite gable to the east and a set-back two-storey gabled block to the west, which has a buttress at the angle and a snecked rubble elevation facing Step Row, along with a battered wallhead stack.

A low boundary wall runs along Magdalen Yard Road, featuring skewed ashlar piers and modern railings. The monumental over-arched gateway has been reduced to match the scale of the other piers.