Carnegie Building, 121 Donegall Road, Belfast, County Antrim, BT12 5JL

Carnegie Building, 121 Donegall Road, Belfast

This is a former Carnegie library, now converted to office use, built between 1907 and 1909 to designs by the Belfast architects Graeme-Watt & Tulloch. The building is constructed in red brick in the Tudoresque style and sits on the north side of Donegall Road at Roseland Place, southwest of Belfast city centre. It is the largest of three Carnegie branch libraries in Belfast designed by the same firm — the others being on Oldpark Road and Falls Road — and one of approximately sixty-two surviving Carnegie libraries across Ireland, eight of which are in Northern Ireland.

The building sits on an L-shaped plan, rising two storeys and one storey over a basement. The roof is pitched natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and leaded valleys, raised stone verges with kneelers surmounted by ball finials, and an octagonal vented cupola to the ridgeline topped by a ball finial and weathervane. There is a tall red-brick chimneystack with sandstone dressings and a terracotta pot. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee with hoppers and square downpipes, carried on a projecting sandstone eaves course. The walls are Flemish-bonded red brick with sandstone dressings, a moulded base course, and an ashlar platband at sill levels. Windows throughout are mullioned and transomed in various configurations with leaded and clear glass.

The main L-shaped block faces southwest. The right bay has three bipartite transomed and mullioned windows to the first floor, all gabled, with a canted bay at ground floor right and a tripartite mullioned window at ground floor left. A projecting gabled bay to the left has a tripartite stepped stairwell window at its right, two pairs of windows at its left, and three windows at ground floor level. The southeast elevation has a mullioned window to the left.

An oblique single-storey porch fills the re-entrant angle and is reached by three stone steps, the top of which is finished with terracotta and cream mosaic tiles. The porch contains a double-leaf nine-panelled timber door with an equilateral-headed transom light set in a sandstone ashlar surround with ornately carved panels to the spandrels. It is framed by octagonal brick columns surmounted by a decorative pierced sandstone parapet. Masonry steps descending to lower ground level are accessed to the left side of the porch and are enclosed by decorative wrought-iron railings with a latch gate.

A two-and-single-storey wing abuts the northwest elevation. The two-storey central gabled block of this wing has two windows to the ground floor. Its southwest and northeast elevations are each three sets of triple mullioned windows wide at first floor level, and are abutted at ground floor by a single-storey castellated block, also three sets of triple mullioned windows wide.

The northeast (rear) elevation is divided into four sections, each topped by a gable. The right-hand section is the widest and has two openings at both first and ground floor. Each of the other sections has a single opening per floor, with timber-sheeted entrance doors alternating with windows at ground floor level. A return extends to the right. At lower ground level there is a timber-sheeted and glazed door at the centre.

The southeast gable is a particularly notable elevation. It features a parapetted canted bay at ground floor with paired mullioned windows, surmounted by a corbel cornice and brick parapet. Above this, at first floor, is a large fifteen-paned transomed and mullioned window. Inscribed sandstone panels carry the words "Belfast Public Library" at the top, "Carnegie Branch" to the left, and "Donegall Road" to the right. Platbands frame a small rectangular apex opening.

The materials used throughout are red brick with Mountcharles stone dressings, string courses, and copings. The building was constructed by contractors Messrs Robert Corry Ltd at a cost of £4,930. It first appears on the 1931 edition of the Ordnance Survey map and entered valuation records in 1908 as a "Carnegie Free Library" valued at £250.

In its original arrangement, the ground floor accommodated a newsroom at the front, lit by the bay windows, with the lending library to the rear. The first floor contained a magazine room and separate rooms for ladies and juveniles.

The listing extends to both the former library and its railings. Since its closure as a library the building has been converted for office use to designs by Andrew Nesbitt Architects, with interventions described as largely sympathetic. The architectural fabric and late-Victorian detailing are largely intact and the building retains much of its original character.

The building is corner-sited between Roseland Place and Utility Street at Donegall Road. Utility Street is partially cobbled. Steps rise from the public footpath to the porch, with the area to either side enclosed by decorative wrought-iron railings. To the south lie City Hospital Train Station and a terrace of late 20th-century two-storey houses. Roseland Place to the north has a terrace of mid-20th-century two-storey houses and a red-brick Church Hall. To the west, Roseland Place terminates at a high masonry wall and steel gates enclosing a large cleared building site, also accessible from Utility Street.

Historical background

The story of this building begins with Andrew Carnegie, who was born in Scotland but emigrated to America with his family when hand-loom weaving — the basis of the family's income — was undercut by mechanisation. As a boy in Pittsburgh, Carnegie had benefited from a library opened by a local philanthropist and became convinced that there was no better use for money than the founding of public libraries for the benefit of young people. He went on to accumulate great wealth through railway manufacturing and steel production. In 1881 he made his first gift of a public library to his home town of Dunfermline, and in 1901, having sold his company, he donated over five million dollars to New York City for the construction of 65 branch libraries. In total he financed around 2,500 libraries across ten countries, the large majority in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland. Between 1897 and 1913 Carnegie promised over £170,000 for the building of approximately 80 libraries in Ireland, of which sixty-two survive. In Ireland, Carnegie insisted that his provision was solely for libraries, though he did also fund church organs.

Belfast Corporation had opened a Central Library in 1888 under the provisions of the Libraries Act and by the turn of the 20th century was considering branch libraries. A rise in the library rate was proposed to fund four branches serving north, south, east, and west Belfast. The first purpose-built branch opened at Ballymacarrett in 1903, chosen for its high population density. Before that opening, the library committee had already applied to Carnegie for a grant for the remaining three branches. Belfast's chief librarian, G. H. Elliott, visited Carnegie and his adviser Dr Hew Morrison on several occasions before Carnegie granted £15,000 in 1902. The grant was conditional on an increase in the library rate to cover maintenance costs, and on three sites being provided by the city. A free site on Donegall Road was offered by A. W. Vance, and adjacent land was purchased for £600 using funds from the Corporation Gas Committee. It was not until 1905 that the Corporation was able to report to Carnegie that all three sites had been secured, suitable land having been much in demand.

In February 1905, the Irish Builder announced that Graeme-Watt & Tulloch had won a competition — limited to local architects — to design the three Carnegie branch libraries. The judging was carried out by Sir Thomas Drew, who found Graeme-Watt & Tulloch's plans to be "far and away the best" and noted the "lack of knowledge of library requirements displayed by many of the competitors." The firm was considered to have made particularly skilful use of what was in the case of Donegall Road a very awkward site, the Tudoresque manor house style lending itself well to the asymmetric nature of the plot.

Donegall Road library opened to the public on 5th March 1909, the last of the three Carnegie branches to open. The building is privately owned.