Description

Earlier 19th century. 3-storey 3-bay Classical tenement building with altered shops to ground. Grey granite ashlar, rubble to rear. Symmetrical shop front with round-arched central opening flanked by elliptical-arched openings. 4-pane timber entrance door to far right with narrow timber pilastered doorcase and semicircular astragalled fanlight above. Band course, cill courses, eaves cornice. Gabled stair well to rear.

12-pane timber sash and case windows to upper storeys. Grey slate. Coped gable stacks.

Statement of Interest

This tenement building with its restrained, Classical style forms an essential component of the planned streetscape of King Street. The Classical style was to dominate the planned early nineteenth century city of Aberdeen and this is a good example. The building sits immediately to the North of St Andrews Cathedral (see separate listing) and within a row of similar classical buildings and is crucial to the visual appearance of the street. The bold town planning which created Union Street and King Street was the defining gesture which allowed Aberdeen to develop from a contained medieval burgh to a modern rational city.

King Street developed after 1794, when a town council meeting asked the engineer Charles Abercrombie to find a way to connect the original steep, muddled Medieval streets of Aberdeen to the surrounding countryside. His plan was for two streets, one of which would run from Castlegate to the Denburn and the other which would run from the Castlegate to the North of the town. The latter was King Street. A competition for designs for this new street brought forward a design from Thomas Fletcher. This was to be a long classical façade, with a pedimented centrepiece and higher end blocks. This design was begun on the East side in 1805, with the creation of nos 8-10 (see separate listing). The idea of a standard, uniform terrace, however, was abandoned when negotiations had to be entered into with owners regarding the length of the frontages and the heights of the buildings. It was then decided to allow some variations between designs, whilst keeping to the essential classical style.

Part of B Group with 5 Castle Street, Nos 1-56 (inclusive nos) King Street and St Andrews Episcopal Cathedral.

External Links

• Historic Environment Scotland Listing
• Wikidata Q17775304

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hampshire: Winchester and the North (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Kent: North East and East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  For the Record