36-38 Donegall Place, Belfast, BT1 5BB

Terraced symmetrical multi-bay four-storey painted brick and stucco-fronted gabled commercial building, built c.1903, to the designs of Vincent Craig in an Edwardian Freestyle, with replacement shopfront to the ground floor. Rectangular on plan facing west onto Donegall Place. Interior mostly removed and rebuilt c.2000 with flat-roofed three-storey rear extension. Replacement steeply pitched natural slate roof to the front abutting decorative gabled parapet with further single pitched natural slate roof to the rear. Tall painted redbrick profiled chimneystacks rising from parapets to either side elevation having terracotta pots. Painted redbrick walling laid in English garden wall bond. Square-headed window openings with continuous flush masonry lintels, flush splayed masonry sills and original fixed-pane timber windows or single-pane timber sash windows (unless otherwise stated). Front elevation is surmounted by a large triangular gable with moulded masonry coping and a pair of scrolled carvings supporting an octagonal masonry finial to the apex. Decorative masonry plaque to the gable states; ‘1803 / N / 1903’. Flanking the gable is a pair of raised corner parapets, returning to meet the chimneystacks to the side elevations with curvilinear coping and square plaques. Squat Venetian window opening to the third floor with moulded surround and a pair of engaged squat columns. The second floor has five square-headed window openings with the central three set within a shallow recess (to first and second floors. The entire second floor is crowned by a deep moulded cornice rising as a shallow segmental pediment to the central recess and supported on corbels to either side. The pediment is filled with three figurative carvings and a ribbon banner stating; ‘Tempus Fugit’. The recess to the first floor has a shallow bowed masonry framed five-light window with masonry mullions and transom with the overlights having the same shallow segmental profile as the crowning cornice. To either side is a bipartite window opening with stone transom and mullion surmounted by a shield and decorative scrolled surround. Modern glazed shopfront to the ground floor framed by a full-span polished stone-clad surround and topped by an original full-span cornice. North side elevation abutted by adjoining building. Rear elevation abutted and obscured by three-storey flat-roofed rear extension. South side elevation abutted by adjoining building. Setting Street-fronted on a terrace of twentieth-century commercial buildings on the east side of Donegall Place. Roof : Replacement natural slate RWG: Not visible Walling: Painted redbrick Windows: Original fixed-pane timber