Meadowside Place Buildings, Dundee

Meadowside Place Buildings, Dundee

A three-storey building with basement and attic, designed by James MacLaren and dated 1884, with additions by Robert Gibson circa 1920. The structure occupies an island site on falling ground and presents four elevations of irregular plan. It is constructed in cream sandstone ashlar, channelled to the ground floor of the original building, with some polished Peterhead granite dressings. The roof is of piended grey slate, with an octagonal roof to the Bell Street/Meadowside angle featuring fishscale bands, segmental pediments, and an elaborately finialled lantern.

The original building is distinguished by pilastered angles (rusticated to ground floor, segmentally pedimented to first floor, and paired to second floor), while the addition is delineated by plain pilaster strips. A band course runs to the ground floor, and continuous cill courses mark the first and second floors with corbel detail to first-floor windows. The parapet is corbelled with dies and balustraded, and includes an aediculed dormer to a canted angle bay at the Bell Street/Meadowside corner.

The original building's windows feature tripartite keystones and decorative iron grilles to the basement; single and bipartite windows elsewhere. Round-headed stilted architraves with sculpted timpani of differing designs ornament the ground floor. First-floor windows have shouldered and corniced architraves, some with pediments, while second-floor windows have recessed architraves with pilastered mullions. The addition's windows are single, bi- and tripartite, corniced to the ground floor and corniced and architraved to the first floor, with stop-chamfered examples to the second floor and a large piened rooflight. Later box dormers and two-pane timber sash and case frames are throughout. Corniced ridge stacks with distinctive squat, square-section terracotta cans crown the original building.

The Bell Street elevation comprises four recessed bays to the left with a keystoned and moulded round-headed Peterhead granite doorcase to a right re-entrant, accompanied by a piered and pilastered porch with mannered shaped pediment and a window to its left. A bipartite V-bay window rises from basement to third floor at the far left. Bays to the right contain windows arranged 1-2-2-1 from basement to third floor, with a tripartite canted window to all floors at the right angle.

The Meadowside elevation features nine original bays to the left, with a consoled and corniced doorpiece to the right and a round-headed window above, along with windows to the first and second floors. Six bays to the left comprise two tripartite windows to ground, first and second floors, a bay at the far left with a window to each floor, and a blank bay to the outer left bearing date and building name panels. Five later bays occupy the right side; four of these have tripartite windows to each bay at ground, first and second floors, while a single window to all floors marks the bay at the right.

The Victoria Road elevation displays three principal bays with tripartite windows to all floors, a bay to the left with a single window to all floors, and a splayed bay at the far left with bipartite windows to all floors.

The Meadow Place elevation comprises four original bays to the right, featuring a door to the left with fanlight and banded pilasters, a door at the second bay from the right with a tripartite doorpiece, and round-headed windows above and at flanking bays, with four windows to the first and second floors. Four later bays occupy the left side, with a door to the right flanked by bipartite windows at the first and second floors above, two central bays with tripartite windows to all floors, and a bay at the far left with bipartite windows to all floors.

The interior was not examined.