81-87 Royal Avenue, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 1FE

81–87 Royal Avenue is a four-storey commercial building with an attic, originally constructed in 1888 and sitting within a continuous terrace on the east side of Royal Avenue in Belfast. It was designed in a simple Victorian Classical style by Samuel Stevenson (1859–1924), a Belfast-based architect who had trained at Young & Mackenzie before establishing his own independent practice in the city in 1886. This building was one of his earliest commissions. It was constructed for the residential estate agency McKelvey & McCombe and was known originally as Avenue Chambers. The building is one of the original properties erected as part of the Royal Avenue redevelopment of 1880–81, when the city surveyor J. C. Bretland laid out the new boulevard by demolishing Hercules Place and Hercules Street and relocating approximately 4,000 people, creating the long open thoroughfare that now runs from Donegall Square to York Street. Nos 81–87, along with the buildings opposite at nos 58–88, were among the last properties to be erected along the northern stretch of this newly created boulevard.

The building was largely reconstructed in 1999, at which point the interior was gutted and all historic fabric removed. A stone plaque on the façade records the new name, Ashling Buildings, and the 1999 date. This reconstruction resulted in the loss of significant historic fabric and detailing: the upper levels of the façade were rebuilt in modern brick and the interior was entirely lost. Although some external character survives, the building no longer meets the tests for special architectural or historic interest and was delisted in August 2015.

The exterior presents a pitched roof, unseen behind the parapet, with pitched dormers whose sides are slate-hung. There are brick chimneys with a stepped cornice to the centre and to the south gable, both rebuilt. Rainwater goods are hidden within the construction. The walls are of stretcher-bonded red brick, though the parapet and dormers are of a visibly different brick from the lower floors, and there is evidence of new brickwork to all lintels. Decorative elements include a giant order of pilasters with gauged brick, sandstone dormer pediments with block and ball finials, an 1888 date stone to the main dormer, dormer string courses, dentilled cornices to the eaves and ground floor, string courses at sill levels, and moulded hoods to the first-floor windows. A stone plaque inscribed 'Ashling Buildings 1999' is set into the façade. At ground floor level there are gablets over black granite rusticated and fluted pilasters.

Window openings to the attic are flat brick arches; those to the other floors are shallow segmental brick arches, with dropped keystones to the second and third floors. The attic and third-floor windows are uPVC; the first- and second-floor windows are replacement 1-over-1 sash windows with horns; and the ground floor has replacement shop windows. On the west elevation there are five dormers, with the second from the north gable having three windows and the remaining dormers having single windows. The fourth floor has fifteen windows grouped in threes, while the first and second floors have eleven windows, reflecting the rhythm of the gables in a 2:3:2:2:2 arrangement. The entrance is now incorporated within the shopfront.

The north elevation is abutted and obscured by the adjoining listed building. The east elevation is entirely of new brick construction and features an external metal staircase covered by corrugated sheeting. The south elevation is abutted and obscured by a terraced building of equal height.

The roof is covered in natural slate, the walls are red brick, the windows are a mixture of timber and uPVC, and the rainwater goods are hidden within the construction.

On its completion in 1888 the building was valued at £351 in total. It originally comprised four ground-floor retail units with the upper floors used as offices. By 1900, following the Belfast Revaluation, its value had risen to £574, and the valuer noted that the northernmost unit at no. 87 had a connection to the adjoining No. 90 North Street to the rear. In 1901 the ground floor was occupied by McKelvey & McCombe (estate agents), P. & J. E. Byrnes (tobacconists), A. J. Lewis (solicitors), and Walter Marsden (a wallpaper merchant), while the upper offices were used by the solicitors G. K. Smith & J. S. McTear and Ferguson & Houston, as well as by the building's own architect Samuel Stevenson and the engineer Godfrey William Ferguson (c.1855–1939). McKelvey & McCombe continued to occupy the building until the mid-20th century. By 1910 Cripps & Co. opticians and Tom Sterling's confectioners had taken over two of the ground-floor retail units, and a photographic studio called the Palace Studio operated from the attic floor. By 1918 the drapery firm Sinclair & Co., which later constructed the adjoining nos 89–101 Royal Avenue in 1926–35, had taken two of the ground-floor shops. By 1930 the total rateable value stood at £605 10s, rising under the First General Revaluation of 1935 to £940, at which point McKelvey & McCombe were recorded as occupants for the final time, vacating the property between 1935 and 1956. The 1956 Second General Revaluation increased the rateable value of nos 83–87 to £1,480; at that time no. 81, occupied by Sinclair & Co., was jointly valued with that firm's department store at nos 65–73 Royal Avenue at a combined total of £4,184.

The formerly separate ground-floor retail units have since been converted into a single large retail premises. The building sits directly on the east pavement of the busy commercial Royal Avenue, adjoined to the north by a listed building and facing three further listed buildings on the opposite side of the street.