Thread by @cocteautriplets

Why settle for a single mansard when you can have a double mandard split across 3 levels?

Built on the site of the Argyle Place Church which burned down in 1974 during renovations (I believe a blow lamp set fire to paint)

I suppose the 7-storey corner tower kind of echoes the former steeple tower, and the dropping roofline too is a nod to what was there before. The dormers in the mansard are actually quite a traditional tenement roof style (balconies excepted!).

Just over the road is Edinburgh's German Speaking Congregation church, one of my *absolute* favourite little bits of modernism around town. Very underrated and plain, but beautifully leafy and with that stained glass curtain wall.

View from the inside of the "Laudate House" (pic = Die Brücke)

And what good bit of mid-century is complete without a cantilever? (pic = Lutheran Church of GB)

Completed in 1967 by Reiach & Hall to designs by German architect Alfred Schildt. The stained glass is by Scottish modern artist George Garson who specialised in mosaic, stained glass and concrete/stone panel work

Edinburgh has had a German-speaking congregation since the late 1850s. Johann Blumenreich secured halls for worship in Queen Street in 1862 from the then United Presbyterian Church (the halls were part of its college)

The German conregation built its own church, completed in 1881, on Rodney Street (the now Bellevue Chapel). The congregation disbanded at the start of the first world war, and the church was taken over by The Brethren.

The congregation did not publicly reconvene until over 30 years later, when they began to meet again in the late 1940s in the Holy Trinity Church at Dean Bridge

(Holy Trinity itself had an interesting history, as in 1957 the insides were taken over by the SSEB (South of Scotland Electricity Board) and filled with national grid high voltage transformer equipment. It was only recently converted back to ecclesiastical use

Anyway, in the early 1950s, the Glendinnings Dance School, based in a villa on Chalmers Crescent in Marchmmont, became vacant and the German congregation acquired it. The villa became the manse, the dance hall the worship hall.

And in the mid 1960s, the congregation was able to replace the old villa with its current premises. I should probably tag them in here too; @GermanChurchSCO

Thanks @RevStuartIrvin for the picture from the back of the Laudate House, must be not long after completion and before Argyle Place Church succumbed to fire in 1974