99-101 North Street, Belfast, Co. Antrim, BT1 1NL

99-101 North Street, Belfast

A three-storey stuccoed commercial block with attic, built around 1896, standing on the northern side of North Street. The building is symmetrical and gable-fronted, with three bays across its width. It is rectangular in plan, with a flat-roofed single-storey return extending to the rear.

The principal south-facing elevation presents a shallow breakfront across all floors and is treated as a gable-fronted pediment. The roof, pitched and covered in natural slate running perpendicular to the street, is concealed behind a raised verge with a dentilled cornice beneath a half-roundel motif at the apex. A red brick chimneystack rises to the east. Parapet gutters with uPVC hoppers and downpipes conduct water to the rear elevation.

The stuccoed masonry walls are embellished with simplified neo-classical devices. Window openings are largely segmental-headed, with a wider opening to the central bay. Those on the south elevation are flanked by stuccoed pilasters with fluted capitals rising to impost level, carried on continuous projecting sill courses. Current windows are replacement multi-paned fixed timber casements with top-hinged lights to upper-central panes.

The first floor features square-headed windows flanked by full-height pilasters rising to a plain entablature, whose cornice forms the sill course of the second floor windows. Second floor openings are set within shallow segmental-headed recesses with keyed hood mouldings sprung from flanking pilaster capitals. At attic level, a two-stage breakfront arrangement includes square-panelled mouldings to the outer sides, with three window openings surmounted by a dentilled pediment to the centre. Pilasters flanking the attic windows have Corinthian-style capitals with hood mouldings and scalloped keystones.

The ground floor shopfront has been modernised with a steel roller-shutter and painted masonry fascia carrying vinyl signage. It is framed by painted cast-iron pilasters with fluted lower sections and Composite-style capitals, rising to fluted consoles with foliate motifs supporting round-headed pediments that flank the moulded masonry cornice.

The west elevation is largely abutted by the neighbouring building at Nos. 103-105, with the roof partially concealed behind a red brick parapet. The rear (north) elevation is gable-fronted, constructed of machine-made red brick with segmental-headed window openings to the first and second floors having brick voussoirs and projecting masonry sills. A single square-headed window opens from the left side at first floor level. The openings are currently blocked with concrete blocks. The east elevation is largely abutted by the neighbouring building at Nos. 95-97, though the right-side wall is exposed and comprises machine-made red brick extending to a matching parapet.

The building is currently vacant, with a retail unit at ground floor and associated offices and storage space on upper floors. The rear yard is bounded by a steel fence and a single-storey flat-roofed building to the north (not thought to relate to this property), beyond which lies a public car park.

The building forms part of a street-fronted group of similarly dated commercial buildings, including Nos. 95-97 to the east and Nos. 103-105 to the west, all facing south across North Street.