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Latitude: 55.9505 / 55°57'1"N
Longitude: -3.1894 / 3°11'21"W
OS Eastings: 325820
OS Northings: 673687
OS Grid: NT258736
Mapcode National: GBR 8PG.FD
Mapcode Global: WH6SL.ZPDN
Plus Code: 9C7RXR26+56
Entry Name: 32 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh
Listing Name: 32 Cockburn Street
Listing Date: 12 December 1974
Category: B
Source: Historic Scotland
Source ID: 370856
Historic Scotland Designation Reference: LB30089
Building Class: Cultural
ID on this website: 200370856
Peddie and Kinnear, Architects, 1859-61. 3-storey 3-bay Baronial building with machicolated parapet and angle round to Anchor Close. Squared and snecked lightly stugged sandstone with polished dressings. Moulded string course between ground and 1st floors, stepped to elevation to left. Stop-chamfered openings. 2-leaf timber-panelled storm door to centre. Segmental-arched windows to 1st floor.
4-pane glazing to timber sash and case windows.
A Group comprises 1-63 (Odd Nos) and 2-6 and 18-56 (Even Nos) Cockburn Street. Working drawings show that No 32 was originally designed to be 2 storeys in height. It was designed for a wine-merchant named Rutherford. Known briefly as Lord Cockburn Street, Cockburn Street was named after the doyen of conservationists, Lord Cockburn, who died in 1854. It was built by the High Street and Railway Station Access Company, under the Railway Station Acts of 1853 and 1860, to provide access to Waverley Station from the High Street. The serpentine curve of the street (anticipated in Thomas Hamilton's Victoria Street) gives a gradient of not more than 1:14; James Peddie and Henry J Wylie were the engineers. One of the aims of the design was to conceal the diagonal line of the street from Princes Street. A watercolour perspective drawing of the street by John Laing, published in THE BUILDER of 1860, shows how this was to be achieved. Stylistically, the intention was 'to preserve as far as possible the architectural style and antique character of the locality.' Peddie and Kinnear's Cockburn Street designs are an innovative adaptation (much imitated later) of the Scots Baronial style, previously used by Burn and Bryce in country houses, to the urban situation, with shops and tenements enlivened by crowstepped gables, corbelling and turrets.
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