Steamer Street Tenements

The Steamer Street Tenements are a large tenement block facing Island Road, constructed between 1881 and 1884 by Paley and Austin of Lancaster, with main contractors Smith and Caird of Dundee. The building is built of red brick with graduated slate roofs. It is four storeys high, with a symmetrical arrangement of 3 bays, then 23 bays, then 3 bays. The slightly recessed central section features alternate paired and single windows, and a group of single windows in the middle, all with 4/2-pane sash windows. The ground-floor windows have flush sills and triple-header segmental arches; those on the first floor have projecting sills. A dichromatic band runs below the second floor, from which six pilaster strips rise, interrupting a moulded string course. There is a string course and terracotta corbel table leading to a cast-iron ogee gutter. The third floor is treated as an attic storey, with hipped-roof dormers within a mansard roof, and plain ridge stacks on the party walls. The end pavilions rise four full storeys, with the upper floors set higher than the central block, each featuring a round-arched opening to the central staircase and tripartite landing openings with iron balustrades and corbelled segmental arches. Paired windows are present on each side except for the outer bay on the ground floor, which contains a shop window with a segmental arch and dripmould. Second-floor windows cut a moulded string course, and a dichromatic band is located below the third-floor windows. The eaves are similar to the central block but interrupted by a canopy formed by a catslide roof on four curved brackets, with a hipped roof and corbelled end stack. The rear elevation, facing Steamer Street, exhibits four full storeys with eleven staircases, each with a half-landing balcony and iron railings under round arches. Utility wings have casements in former unglazed openings, topped with hipped roofs. The pavilion returns include a shop door flanked by segmentally-arched shop windows under a linked hoodmould. The rear of the building contains utility wings with hipped roofs. The Steamer Street Tenements were built to house workers for the Barrow Iron Shipbuilding Company and are one of two identical blocks flanking a range of simpler buildings towards the rear of Devonshire Buildings, Michaelson Road. The tenements are a well-preserved example of a building type rare in England.