33 Massey Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim, BT4 2JT

33 Massey Avenue is a detached neo-Georgian stone building designed by Sir Arnold Thornely and built in 1932. It stands adjacent to the west entrance gate of the Stormont Estate, fronting onto Massey Avenue just outside the estate boundary. Thornely, a Liverpool-based architect (1870–1953), was also responsible for designing the main Parliament Buildings and their two gate lodges. The Provincial Bank of Ireland constructed the building using the same Portland limestone ashlar as Stormont itself. The local firm Stewart & Partners, who erected Parliament Buildings, also built this bank. By 1938–39 the building was recorded on the Ordnance Survey map.

The building is described as one and a half storeys in some records and two storeys in others, with a regular plan form and a single-storey flat-roofed extension to the rear. It has a pyramidal natural slate roof (originally Westmoreland slates) with rolled leaded ridges and Portland limestone ashlar chimneys, now blocked. The walling is smooth Portland limestone ashlar with shallow corner pilasters and a blocking course to the eaves with cornicing framing the upper storey.

Window openings are square-headed with shallow recessed surrounds, featuring steel windows and segmental-headed dormer windows with timber casements. The principal west-facing elevation is symmetrical with a central shallow projecting breakfront decorated with carved stone urns. A central square-headed door opening has an architrave and scrolled console brackets supporting a dentilled hood mould, with a replacement panelled timber double door with glazing and fanlight opening onto a stone threshold and concrete block paved platform. A single segmental-arched dormer window sits to the centre.

The symmetrical five-bay north elevation, fronting Massey Avenue, features a three-bay central breakfront with carved stone urns. Window openings in the two end bays are flanked by shallow pilasters with a carved stone swag over and moulded cornice above. Windows in the middle bays are larger with arched detail to the top panes. Three dormer windows light the attic storey. The south elevation is symmetrical and three bays wide, with a projecting two-and-a-half-storey hipped roof central bay containing a square-headed door opening with architrave and scrolled console brackets supporting a hood mould, fitted with a timber panelled door and bronze door furniture. Square-headed window openings to the first and attic floors have small-paned steel casement windows. The end bays contain a triple window to ground floor and an oriel window to the first floor, with segmental-arched dormer windows to the attic. The east elevation features a single-storey flat-roofed L-shaped ashlar limestone abutment with two small square-headed window openings facing south with timber top-hung casement windows, and a square-headed door opening with a modern door to an east-facing recess. A five-bay south projection has a square-headed window opening with modern metal door and fanlight to the central bay and two square-headed window openings with replacement top-hung timber casement windows to each side.

The building was originally the Stormont branch of the Provincial Bank of Ireland. The property was valued at £245 under the First Revaluation in 1935, raised to £266 by the end of the Second Revaluation (1956–72). In 1966 the Provincial Bank of Ireland merged with the Royal Bank of Ireland and the Munster & Leinster Bank to form Allied Irish Banks Ltd. The bank vacated the property by 1988 when it was sold into private ownership and listed the same year. A renovation in 1998 included repairs to the roof, replacement of defective rainwater goods, and cleaning and restoration of the external Portland stone. In 2013 the former bank was converted into a restaurant.

The building is located within its own grounds with a two-storey house of little architectural interest and a car park to the south. The site is partly landscaped and tarmaced, enclosed to the north by plain ashlar limestone walling with tall cast-iron railings and square caged cast-iron piers topped with metal urns. Hedging borders the east and west sides, with trees to the south. The building has been successfully conserved and adapted for reuse. It retains most of its original materials and detailing, with fine elaborately detailed interiors. It forms an important component of the group of structures at the Massey Avenue entrance to Stormont Estate, continuing the architectural style and materials of the Parliament Building and holding significant group value with the other listed buildings in the estate.