16 Sunnyside St., Belfast

Number 16 Sunnyside Street is a two-storey red-brick terraced house built in 1903, located approximately 3 kilometres from Belfast city centre on the south side of Sunnyside Street, a canted thoroughfare connecting the Ormeau Road with Annadale Embankment. It forms part of a terrace of 21 similar dwellings built between 1903 and 1910 as Belfast expanded rapidly southwards along its main thoroughfares during the Edwardian period.

The main body of the house is rectangular in plan with a two-storey rectangular-shaped return featuring a flat roof added later. The building is constructed in smooth red clay brick laid in English Garden Wall bond, with clay ventilation bricks at each level and a projecting moulded brick course at eaves level supporting cast metal ogee guttering. The roof is natural slate with a replacement red-brick chimney stack on the right-hand side, featuring projecting brick courses and clay pots.

The front elevation faces north and displays a painted timber four-panel door with overlight containing plain glazing positioned to the left, and a uPVC top-hung double-glazed window to the right. Both the door and window feature semicircular and segmental heads respectively, each surrounded by a moulded architrave. A smaller similar window is positioned almost centrally on the first floor. Cast metal rainwater goods serve the front, with uPVC fittings to the rear.

The rear elevation to the south retains a uPVC top-hung double-glazed window at ground level and a further window at first floor, both to the left-hand side. A modern two-storey extension constructed in red rustic clay brick was added to the right-hand side, stepping down to single-storey approximately halfway along its length. This extension has flat roofs with painted timber fascia boards, uPVC windows, door, rainwater goods and soil stack, with blank south and east elevations. A small internal yard is bounded to the west by the two-storey red-brick wall of the adjacent house, Number 18, and is enclosed by a red-brick yard wall with concrete coping, featuring a square-headed doorway with painted timber boarded door and barbed wire along its top. The side elevations abut adjacent properties: Number 14 Sunnyside Street to the east and Number 18 to the west.

A small front garden finished in concrete block paviors sits behind a replacement red-brick boundary wall and gateway with painted metal railings and arched gate. This boundary treatment was installed around 1988 as part of a comprehensive improvement scheme affecting the entire terrace. The rear is bounded to the south by a communal laneway shared with Whitehall Gardens.

Although the original windows have been replaced with uPVC and a flat-roofed two-storey extension has been added to the rear, the building retains external character through its panelled timber front door, stucco surrounds and slate roof. The house demonstrates group value with the remainder of the terrace and represents a good example of modest Edwardian urban terraced housing characteristic of Belfast's southward expansion.

The terrace was developed by Hugh Scott, who is recorded as the lessor for numbers 14 to 42 in 1906, though the identity of any architect remains unknown. Numbers 14 to 24 were first shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1903 and recorded in the valuation book that year; numbers 26 to 42 were entered the following year, and numbers 44 to 52 were first noted in 1910. Sunnyside Street itself is shown for the first time on the Ordnance Survey town plan of 1871–73 as a lane stretching from the Ormeau Road to Whitehall Parade, with only a terrace of six houses on the north side marked as 'Sunnyside'. By 1879, Marcus Ward's map designated it 'Sunnyside Street', taking its name from the original development. The opening of King's Bridge in 1912 allowed the street to reach its current extent as a thoroughfare linking to Ridgeway Street across the River Lagan.

The first recorded occupant of Number 16 was Robert Casey, followed by Mrs Jane Gibson around 1908 and Patrick Rice, a fruit salesman, around 1910. The 1911 census records the building as a second-class dwelling containing five rooms, occupied by Patrick Rice, his wife Lizzie, and their ten children. Hugh Shanks, a hair dresser, resided there from 1918 and remained until the early 1960s, with other residents including Matt Hunter, a labourer, recorded by 1925. Eric M. Wilson, a clerk, is noted in the 1967 street directory and was still resident in 1974. Subsequent occupants included Virginia Patrick from 1980 and Gerard Sheils from 1990, who remained into the mid-1990s. The property was listed in 1986, and external renovation works were carried out by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive around 1999–2000. The house was fully refurbished internally around 2015.