Ormeau Baths Gallery, 18 Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 8HS

Ormeau Baths Gallery is a two-storey symmetrical former public swimming baths in the Queen Anne Revival style, built around 1890 to designs by Robert Graeme Watt, a Belfast-based architect who was working independently at the time. The building stands on Ormeau Avenue, south of Belfast city centre, opposite BBC Broadcasting House. It has been extensively restored and sympathetically extended to provide gallery and commercial space, with the conversion carried out between 1990 and 1996 by architects Twenty-Two-over-Seven. The building won an RIBA Award in 1998 and in the same year was the first recipient of the Ulster Architects Award.

HISTORY

In May 1888, the Corporation of Belfast signed a contract with McLaughlin and Harvey to erect a public baths on Ormeau Avenue, to designs by Robert Graeme Watt. The contract required the building to be completed by the end of 1888, though the baths were not finished and opened until 1889. A Mr John Robinson was contracted to supply sixteen individual marble baths, which were housed in partitioned rooms within the single-storey front wings of the building. The estimated cost of construction was £7,690 8s. 10d., and McLaughlin and Harvey submitted a tender approximately £300 lower than the next lowest bid. The Public Baths and adjoining caretaker's house were originally valued at £350 and owned by the Corporation of Belfast.

The building first appears on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02, depicted as an oblong structure. By 1906 its rateable value had risen to £635, though this was reduced to £400 by 1915. By 1930 it had risen again to £650, and the first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935 set the value at £740. By 1968 this had risen through inflation to £2,000.

Watt's design was similar in layout to his later surviving public baths on Templemore Avenue (1891), in that both possessed two swimming pools connected by a two-storey central administration block, though unlike the Templemore Avenue baths the Ormeau building was constructed in a distinctive Queen Anne style. Both were socially significant buildings in the late 19th century, at a time when the vast majority of houses in Belfast had only basic sanitation facilities and very few possessed bathrooms. The historian Brett criticised the design as under-ambitious, describing it as a "regrettable brick building markedly inferior both in dignity and in voluptuousness to the baths of ancient Rome."

The baths were extended and partly refurbished in the 1950s, but by the 1970s one of the swimming pools had developed cracks and was closed without repair. By 1987 Belfast City Council's Leisure Services Committee announced its intention to close the baths entirely. The committee voted to close Ormeau Baths in 1988, the same year in which the Victorian building was listed. Two additional red brick wings were added to the east and west of the building during the conversion, and the eastern wing currently houses the Ormeau Baths Gallery. The Public Baths on Templemore Avenue continues to operate as a public swimming pool.

EXTERIOR

The building comprises a square-plan three-bay entrance block to the front, with a complex of rectangular blocks to the side and rear, a boiler room and large chimney at the rear, all flanked by two modern blocks.

The roof of the original building is finished in natural slate with hipped forms, leaded hips, and tall red brick chimneys. Cast-iron ogee-moulded gutters with circular downpipes complete the roofline. The walls are of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with moulded plinth, string, and cornice courses, corbel courses, and red sandstone dressings and carvings. Windows are timber casement type with red brick surrounds featuring chamfered jambs, segmental-arched heads, and moulded sandstone cills. Entrances have timber double-leaf doors with upper glazed panels, sidelights with aprons, and overlights.

The principal elevation faces north and is symmetrically arranged. A central projecting bay carries a sandstone pediment bearing the city's coat of arms, with three windows to each floor and three terracotta panels; there is a dentilled cavetto string course and a terracotta egg-and-dart cornice. The flanking entrance porches are detailed with round-headed brick openings, sandstone capitals, and carved sandstone spandrels with moulded surrounds, surmounted by a sandstone balustrade. First-floor windows appear to each side of these porches.

The east elevation has a single first-floor window to the left. At ground floor level it is abutted by a single-storey, single-bay block with a hipped roof and louvred gablet, which in turn is abutted to the east by a long six-bay former individual bath block with a matching roof style, lower eaves and ridge level, and a partially glazed roof at the apex. The facades of both these flanking elements feature an elliptical-arched blank arcade of five bays with blank oculi.

The rear elevation is entirely abutted by a series of two-storey former service blocks incorporating the chimney and the caretaker's accommodation. The roofscape here comprises a series of slate hipped roofs and a replacement pitched copper roof. The chimney is square in plan internally, rising to a tall circular external section; its detailing includes paired ribbed sandstone courses at lower level, sandstone swags and panels at mid-height, a further ribbed string course and drop-dentilled corbel, surmounted by a cupola on a second-stage dentilled cornice.

The south face of the service accommodation is abutted by a one-and-a-half-storey block with a hipped roof surmounted by a gabled lantern; this elevation features a triplet of round-headed arches. The east and west flanks of the service accommodation are abutted by the double-height gabled former main swimming baths, with pitched roofs, raised lanterns, and clerestory glazing; the west bath has a fully glazed lantern. The north gables of these baths take the form of open pediments, three bays wide, with a raised central bay and stepped apex embracing paired large round-headed windows with hood mouldings and decorative timber frames, flanked by brick pilasters, and with blank round-headed arches to the side bays. The ground floors are abutted by the single-storey former individual bathing blocks, while the respective east and west faces are abutted by the two-storey, shallow barrel-roofed modern red brick extensions.

The south gables match the north gables and are abutted at ground floor by single-storey flat-roofed blocks; the east is four bays wide with squat segmental-arched blank openings, and the west is three bays wide with enlarged tripartite segmental-arched windows. The right elevation matches the left elevation.

INTERIOR

The baths themselves no longer survive, but the historic fabric has been substantially retained in prominent areas and evidence of high-quality original detailing, structure, and materials remains throughout.

SETTING

The building is only partially bounded to the north and south by replacement railings. The front entrance is reached by a series of steps flanked by recently planted trees. Immediately to the south and east are car parks, beyond which lie two-storey terraced residential properties and the central fire station. To the west is the five-storey Fermanagh House. To the north, adjacent to BBC Broadcasting House, is Linenhall Street, with direct views to the rear of Belfast City Hall.