Located behind Adam's 18th Century Register House in West Register Street, Edinburgh, is New Register House. This Italianate structure was built by architect Robert Matheson between 1859 and 1863 and was very much complementary in architectural style to Adam's original. New Register House was needed to provide additional storage capacity for Scotland's archives, particularly for the birth, death and marriage records, which were the result of compulsory registration after 1855. Home of the National Records of Scotland (previously the General Register Office for Scotland), it is today a haven for genealogists because, in addition to the statutory registers, it houses the old parish registers, some of which date back to the 16th C., and the declassified census records. Computerised access is available to indexes of these records.
To the east is the Archivists' Garden, while opposite lies the Café Royal, a historic public house.