Fountain House, 17-21 Donegall Place, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 5AB

Fountain House, 17–21 Donegall Place, is a five-storey rendered commercial building designed in the Art Deco style by the Belfast architectural partnership of Young & Mackenzie and constructed between 1935 and 1937. It occupies a corner plot on the west side of Donegall Place, turning onto the narrow pedestrian Fountain Lane to the south and onto Fountain Street to the west. Although it exhibits characteristic Art Deco motifs, it is not considered among the finest examples of the style, and its architectural integrity has been significantly compromised by fire damage and a subsequent restoration carried out in 2005–07. The building now survives essentially as a façade only and no longer meets the statutory and policy tests for a building of special architectural or historic interest. It was delisted in August 2015.

Young & Mackenzie was formed in 1867–68 as a partnership between Robert Young (1822–1917) and his assistant John Mackenzie (1844–1917). The Dictionary of Irish Architects described the practice as "the most prominent architectural practice in Belfast", receiving some of the most important commercial commissions in the city. When first completed, the building was not known as Fountain House but as Moore House, named after James Moore, the landowner and proprietor of the earlier building on the site. It comprised two ground-floor retail units with office space on the upper floors, and was recorded in the First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 while still unfinished, at which point the completed portion was occupied by James Moore's printing works. The total rateable value of the unfinished building was set at £1,885, with the remaining sections unoccupied until 1937. James Moore Ltd. had previously operated at nos 17–19 Donegall Place as manufacturers of stationery for office and home, including account books, lithography, type printing, engraving, and rubber stamps.

By 1943, Moore's printing works had vacated and the ground-floor retail units were occupied by Etam hosiery and underwear merchants and Paige Gowns Ltd., a clothing warehouse. The upper floors housed a dental surgery, a hairdressing salon, an accountancy firm, a number of insurance companies, and the Northern Ireland government's HM Chief Tax Inspectors Office. No further valuation was carried out until the Second General Revaluation commencing in 1956, by which point the total rateable value of the site had risen substantially to £7,352, at which it remained until that revaluation was cancelled in 1972. The building was renamed Fountain House at some point in the mid-20th century and was listed in 1990. A First Survey Image from 1989 records Etam still occupying one of the ground-floor retail units, with Thornton's chocolate occupying the other. Writing in 1993, Patton described the building as "a five-storey Portland stone building with central feature framed in rope moulding bound with ribbons, and balconies at second and third floors; simple stepped parapet; side bays framed by very shallow pilasters with shields set in ribbons and scrolls as capitals." The building was severely damaged by fire in 2005, after which it was acquired by Deramore Property Group, who stripped out the interior while retaining the façade. The renovated building reopened in 2007, occupied by the New Look clothing store.

Architecturally, the roof is a modern flat-roof structure of panelled metal with stepped pediments to Donegall Place and Fountain Street sitting over the original entablature; rainwater goods are concealed within the structure. The walls are of painted lined render, rusticated to the first floor. A moulded cornice and plain frieze runs at the top and base of the masonry and similarly at first-floor window-head level. The ground floor is faced with black marble. Windows are flat-lintelled, some with stepped reveals and occasional exaggerated keystones; they are replacement two- and six-pane timber frames with top-hung lights. The ground-floor shopfront and entrance door are patent glazing.

The main east elevation facing Donegall Place is symmetrical and nine windows wide, with the windows flanking the central window being narrower. The central section projects slightly and is framed by a full-height rope moulding bound by ribbons. A balconette with solid render panels projects on curved brackets below the third-floor windows, and the first-floor central window is recessed in a shallow arch with an exaggerated keystone. The side sections are framed by shallow giant pilasters with cartouche capitals, and balconettes project below the second-floor windows. The plain frieze at ground-floor level carries metal lettering reading FOUNTAIN HOUSE in the central section, with the number 19 at each side.

The south elevation is abutted by a three-storey building, above which a single fourth-floor uPVC window sits within a panel of lined render; the remaining portion of this elevation is of yellow brick. The west elevation onto Fountain Street is nine windows wide and follows a matching pattern to the east elevation, with each bay of three windows slightly recessed. The second-floor central window is recessed in a round arch with an exaggerated keystone, and the first-floor side windows are separated by plain render pilasters. Metal lettering reading FOUNTAIN HOUSE flanked by the number 34 is positioned in a slightly projecting central section of the ground-floor frieze. The north elevation is 21 windows wide. The four-window-wide section to the east is framed by pilasters with cartouche capitals and a projecting cornice; the two-window bay to the west is framed by plain pilasters and a projecting cornice. A balconette projects below the four easternmost first-floor windows. The lettering FOUNTAIN LANE appears in the ground-floor frieze at each corner of this elevation.

Fountain House forms the end of a terraced block on the west side of the busy Donegall Place, turning the corner onto the narrow pedestrian Fountain Lane and again onto Fountain Street. The building lies within a conservation area.