Alfred House, 19-21 Alfred Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT2 8ED

Alfred House is a five-storey red brick former linen warehouse built in 1912 to designs by Belfast architect James A. Hanna. It stands on a corner plot at the junction of Alfred Street and Clarence Street, close to Belfast city centre, directly opposite St Malachy's Church. Construction began in 1911 and was completed by 1912, as confirmed by a datestone on the building. Hanna practised in Belfast from 1905 and was responsible for a number of Edwardian warehouses in the city, as well as schoolhouses and church buildings. Architectural historian Paul Larmour described his warehouses as the most interesting of the Edwardian era and the years immediately following. The building has since been sympathetically converted into offices, with the internal layout largely unchanged and some elements of a typical Edwardian interior surviving.

The plan is slightly L-shaped, with a shallow re-entrant angle at the south-west corner overlooking a narrow paved courtyard shared with adjacent buildings on Alfred Street and Adelaide Street. The roof is flat with a bituminous coating, surrounded by a brick parapet. There is a single tall circular chimneystack to the west edge. Rainwater goods consist of cast-iron downpipes and moulded sandstone gutters. The building is likely to be of frame construction. External walling is red brick laid in Flemish bond, with moulded sandstone dressings including a cornice, platbands at window head level at each floor, and a moulded sandstone string course between ground and first floor level.

Openings are regularly spaced and set close together, diminishing in height at each successive floor. Metal-framed multi-pane windows are set in flush neo-Tudor transomed and mullioned sandstone reveals to the east front and part of the north elevation. The remaining windows are expansive metal-framed units in plain brick reveals with flush sandstone lintels, some with central pivoted openings; those to the fourth storey are segmental-headed. Unless otherwise noted, ground floor openings have segmental-headed replacement hardwood windows with casement openings and sills close to ground level.

The principal entrance elevation faces east onto Alfred Street and is the most elaborately detailed face of the building. The central section is three bays wide, with Diocletian windows to the top storey, each with a moulded stone archivolt and keyblock. Each bay is framed by Giant order pilasters rising from the first floor string course, creating an arcaded effect with strong vertical emphasis. The segmental ground floor windows have ashlar sandstone heads and are flanked by chunky columns with heavy entasis. Each column has ornate carving to the capital, including winged dragons, interlocking griffins, and stylised Celtic knotwork, and is surmounted by an entablature detailed with a scrolled cartouche reading 'Pure Flax', rising to gargoyles located beneath the string course. All are supported on ashlar sandstone pedestals.

Flanking the central section are two entrance bays — that to the left being the narrower of the two — with a raised parapet. Each has a fourth storey window fronted by a stylised flat Ionic arcade, tetrastyle to the right bay and tristyle to the left. The right bay is surmounted by a segmental pediment over a bracketed cornice, inset with the 1912 datestone flanked by winged beasts; the third storey window in this bay has a sweeping head. The principal entrance in the right bay comprises a double-leaf woodgrained panelled timber door set in a round-headed reveal with a glazed tympanum, having sidelights flanked by twin columns on pedestals matching those described above. The left entrance is more modestly detailed, with plain stone banding to the reveal, ashlar voussoirs and a keyblocked head, and a multi-paned timber-framed tympanum containing Art Nouveau stained glass. The threshold is finished in modern tiles, and cast-iron protective corner brackets are fixed to the reveal, bearing the maker's mark of Gregg Sons & Phoenix Union Foundry, Belfast.

The rear re-entrant angle overlooks the courtyard and features multi-paned glazed curtain walling to all floors between a brick-clad concrete frame. The south and east ends of the building are completely abutted by adjoining structures.

The north elevation faces onto Clarence Street. The two left bays are detailed in the same manner as the principal façade, while the central four bays are more utilitarian in character. To the right side, each floor has a series of four tall, closely spaced windows, with a paired window at ground floor level. There is an entrance door offset to the right, with a tall segmental tympanum and tall flanking sidelights.

The south and west elevations are largely abutted by neighbouring buildings, with the exposed portions of these elevations opening onto the narrow enclosed courtyard that provides pedestrian access from the adjoining Premier Inn to Adelaide Street.

In terms of its historical associations, the building's first recorded occupants following completion were the Walpole Brothers, who operated a linen warehouse from the premises. By 1918, the Belfast Street Directory records the building as occupied by John Henning & Sons Ltd., a linen, damask and cambric handkerchief manufacturing business owned by a Mr. John Henning. During the first general revaluation of property in Northern Ireland in 1935, the site was valued at £630 and recorded as a laundry making up and finishing works, with Henning renting from a Mr. Bernard Hughes, possibly the same Bernard Hughes recorded in the 1910 Belfast Street Directory as owner of a bakery company on the Springfield Road. By the second revaluation in 1956, the value had risen substantially to £1,600. By 1966, however, the warehouse had fallen into disuse and was serving only as a store for John Henning & Sons Ltd., reducing its assessed value to £1,280. At some point between 1966 and the 1990s, the building was occupied by Appletree Press, who converted it into a publishing house. The building was listed in 1988. In 1999, the Town Planning Committee granted permission for conversion of the ground floor into a restaurant and the alteration of the upper levels into offices. The 'Pure Flax' cartouche on the façade serves as an ornamental advertisement plaque directly reflecting the building's original use as a linen warehouse. Architectural historian Jeremy Williams has noted that Hanna designed the warehouse in a neo-Elizabethan style which he believes anticipated the functionalism of post-war architectural design.