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Latitude: 55.9457 / 55°56'44"N
Longitude: -3.1909 / 3°11'27"W
OS Eastings: 325720
OS Northings: 673152
OS Grid: NT257731
Mapcode National: GBR 8PJ.44
Mapcode Global: WH6SL.YTPC
Plus Code: 9C7RWRW5+7J
Entry Name: 20-24 (Even Nos) Forrest Road
Listing Date: 15 October 2001
Category: C
Source: Historic Scotland
Source ID: 395645
Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB48242
Building Class: Cultural
ID on this website: 200395645
Location: Edinburgh
County: Edinburgh
Town: Edinburgh
Electoral Ward: City Centre
Traditional County: Midlothian
John C Hay, 1872. 4-storey, 4-bay, Scots Baronial tenement block with crowstepped gables and shops at ground floor. Crowstepped gables. 3-storey canted windows to outer bays, kneelered gable with carved panel at apex breaking eaves to outer right, piend-roofed canted windows to outer left. Squared and snecked rock-faced sandstone with polished dressings (painted at ground). Continuous moulded cornice and decorative brattishing to shopfronts with stop-chamfered, segmental-arched openings; corbel table at 3rd floor; moulded eaves course. Stop-chamfered, tabbed surrounds at upper windows. Segmental-arched openings at ground. Timber panelled door with segmental-arched fanlight in roll-moulded surround to centre; single windows in 2 bays above, those at 4th floor with ball-finialled gables breaking eaves.
4-pane glazing pattern in timber sash and case windows. Double pitch grey slate roof. Crowstepped skews. Corniced rendered stacks with circular cans. Cast-iron rainwater goods.
A good tenement block, with a variety of distinctive Scots Baronial details, containing a well preservied run of original shop fronts with arched openings retaining some brattishing. The composition contributes to the 19th century historic character of the streetscape. The Dean of Guild drawings show that John C Hay designed the Oddfellows Hall, in the centre of the E side of Forrest Road, and the tenements to either side of which this is one.
John C Hay (c1840-1925) began practising in Edinburgh working from 3 Hanover Street in 1867, after which he moved offices many times. The body of his work is in Edinburgh with some churches but mostly tenements the majority of which are in Marchmont and the South Side of Edinburgh. He was President of the Edinburgh Architectural Society at some point in his career.
The planned street triangle of Forrest Road, Bristo Place and Teviot Row was conceived as part of Thomas Hamilton's (1784-1858) vision for the new Southern Approach Road linking Princes Street to George Square and the Meadows (via the Mound, Bank Street and a the new George IV Bridge). The City Improvement Act brought in by Lord Provost Chambers in 1867 was to implement better housing standards and to replace the medieval slum areas in Edinburgh's Old Town. The groups of Baronial style tenement blocks on Forest Road and Teviot Place were built as a direct result of this development phase.
(List description updated at re-survey 2011-12).
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