Dundas House

The site was previously occupied by a rural refreshment house known as "Peace and Plenty" where visitors could enjoy strawberries and cream. This stood on the road from Edinburgh to Stockbridge, called Gabriels Road, of which remnants are still extant at its extremities. When the town council made plans for a New Town drawn up by James Craig in 1767, the site of the courtyard in front of Dundas House was shown as a proposed church, St. Andrew's, acting as a counterpart to St. George's Church on what became Charlotte Square (originally to be called St. George's Square but an earlier development to the south of the Old Town had been named George Square}. The two were separated by the New Town…

Dundas House is a free-standing house designed in the Palladian style. It was modelled on Roger Morris's 1729 Palladian villa Marble Hill House in Twickenham, London but is much grander. The house is built of cream sandstone ashlar, weathered to light grey, from Ravelston Quarry some three miles to the west. It is fronted with a set of Corinthian pilasters supporting a large central pediment. The house is faced with ashlar with a rusticated ground floor. The large, opulent banking hall, added by Peddie in 1857, is covered by a large circular blue dome which is pierced by 5 tiers of star-shaped gold-rimmed coffered skylights radiating out from the central oculus which diminish in size…

In 2017, the International Music and Performing Arts Charitable Trust Scotland (IMPACT Scotland) announced plans to develop a 1,000-seat concert venue, to be known as The Dunard Centre, behind Dundas House, replacing a block of banking offices that was built in the 1960s. Dundas House would be retained as a bank and would continue to be accessible to the public. Revised planning permission for the development was granted in 2021 following a legal challenge by the developers of a neighbouring site. Work on clearing the site got under way in February 2023. In June 2024, it was announced that the construction of the building would start early in 2025, with a target completion date in 2029.