70 Tay Street, 68, Perth

66 Tay Street, Perth, is a long range of commercial and residential buildings constructed between 1879 and 1881 by John Young, with an extension in 1895 designed by George Penrose Kennedy Young of John Young and Son. The north end of the building was demolished following a fire in 1987. The building, prominently overlooking the River Tay to the east and Greyfriars Burial Ground to the west, is a well-detailed example of Flemish Renaissance domestic and business architecture. It is built of stugged ashlar with a base course, a continuous hoodmould over the ground floor round arched openings, a dividing cill course, an eaves cornice, and a quatrefoil pierced parapet. Architectural details include raked cills, label stops (some with animal heads), stone transoms and mullions. The main entrance bays are articulated with engaged columns, carved capitals, and crowstepped dormerheads with nepus gables. The building features deep-set, single and two-leaf, panelled and cross-braced timber doors, recessed under semicircular plate glass fanlights.

The central block, formerly a museum, is symmetrical, with nine bays grouped as 2-5-2, and features dominant outer towers. The central bay has a steeply-gabled projecting stone doorpiece with a Masonic compass in a mandorla on the tympanum, carved capitals depicting animals in foliage, a timber door with a brass letterbox marked "MUSEUM", and a round arched dormerheaded attic window. A tower to the right has a similar steeply-gabled doorpiece, a machicolated nepus gable with a square-headed window under a stepped hoodmould, and flanking corbelled two-stage angle turrets. The tower to the left projects above the first floor and includes two ground floor windows, a corbelled tripartite oriel window at the first floor, a single window and a gunloop above, and a paired stack to the left.

The sections at Nos. 68 and 70 to the left of the centre block comprise five asymmetrical bays (grouped 2-3), with projecting gabled bays featuring a window and door below a corbelled tripartite oriel window and a glazed arrowslit in the gablehead. The bays to the right have a central window and flanking doors below regular fenestration, with a small, later dormer behind the parapet. Both ground floor windows are bipartite with decorative astragals.

Nos. 72 and 64, the flanking outer blocks, are symmetrically arranged. No. 72 has five bays, grouped 2-1-2, with an arrowslit set within a stepped and shouldered nepus gable. Nos. 62 and 64 feature nine bays grouped 4-1-4, with a columned doorpiece, a round-headed window, and trefoil detail in a crowstepped dormerhead, and a door in the outer right bay.

The windows are timber sash and case with plate glass glazing. The roof is covered in grey slates, with coped ashlar stacks, some with cans, ashlar-coped skews, and gablet crowsteps. Cast iron downpipes have decorative rainwater hoppers and fixings.