16 College Square East, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 6DE

16 College Square East is a four-storey rendered former townhouse built around 1830, forming the southern end of a terrace of similar houses lining the east side of College Square East at its junction with Wellington Place. It faces west, directly opposite the Royal Academical Institution. Though compromised by modern alterations, much of its historic fabric and detailing survives, and together with its neighbours it represents a rare example of a Georgian residential terrace in the heart of Belfast city centre — a building type once common throughout the city centre but now quite scarce. Comparable surviving examples include a four-storey terrace on Chichester Street and two three-storey terraces on Joy Street and Hamilton Street.

The building is rectangular on plan. Its pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles, a lead junction with the adjoining house to the north, and a cement verge to the south gable. Original red brick chimneystacks stand at either end, each with a sandstone course and angled clay pots. The roofline is set behind a lead-lined blocking course and eaves cornice. External walls are finished in painted cement render to the front and sides; the rear elevation is red brick laid in English garden wall bond. The west-facing front elevation is two windows wide, with square-headed window openings, masonry sills, and uPVC windows on the upper floors. The ground floor is dominated by a replacement steel-clad shopfront. The rear elevation is also two windows wide, with gauged brick flat-arched window openings, masonry sills, and replacement single-pane timber sash windows. A two-storey rendered extension, built around 1970, abuts the rear, with a small parking area behind. The north side elevation is abutted by the adjoining No. 15, and the south side elevation by an infill office building.

The terrace of which this building forms part was constructed between 1822 and 1832–33. It does not appear on a map of Belfast published in George Benn's The History of the Town of Belfast, which recorded that the Royal Belfast Academical Institution marked the western limit of the town at that time and was still largely unenclosed by buildings. By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, both the Wellington Place and College Square East terraces had been built. The terrace was laid out in the early 19th century as a residential area, originally intended as part of a Georgian square of handsome townhouses for Belfast's professional classes. Patton notes that by 1890 no fewer than six surgeons lived in the wider terrace at Nos. 11–25 College Square East. The mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson — later known as Lord Kelvin — is believed to have been born in the row as early as 1824, though his birthplace was in the now-demolished section at Nos. 17–25, which was built around 1820–25. A photograph of College Square North dating from around 1880, reproduced in J. C. Beckett's Belfast: The Making of the City, shows the terrace before its conversion to commercial use, with ornate doorcases and fanlights on the ground floor in place of shopfronts.

The contemporary Townland Valuation of Belfast recorded that No. 16 was occupied in 1837 by a Mr W. P. Henderson and valued at £13 7s. 6d. By 1843 the property was vacant, but by 1852 it had been reoccupied by Mr William Booker, a merchant, who remained there at least until 1860 when he was recorded as tenant in Griffith's Valuation. At that point the valuer noted that No. 16, like most of the terrace, was leased from the representatives of the estate of a Mr James Blair, and that its value had risen to £34. Despite Booker having vacated the property by 1877, the Annual Revisions continued to list him as occupant until the 1900 Belfast Revaluation. The property lay vacant again by 1877 before being reoccupied around 1880 by the first of several doctors to reside there, a Dr William McMordie. The 1900 Belfast Revaluation recorded that ownership of the terrace had passed to a Ms Sarah White, who thereafter appeared as lessor, and that a Dr Cecil Shaw was then tenant. The revaluation noted that No. 16 contained eight rooms — including sitting rooms and bedrooms but excluding the kitchen — and was fitted with gas. Its value was increased to £54, with Dr Shaw paying £55 in annual rent. Dr Shaw vacated in 1901, leaving the property vacant and therefore unrecorded in the 1901 census.

By 1907 the building was reoccupied by Ms Jane Hamilton, a local dressmaker who had previously lived further south on College Square East. She used No. 16 as both a home and warehouse rooms for her costume and millinery business. The 1911 census recorded her as a 48-year-old widowed Presbyterian living there with a number of servants and assistants, describing the property as a first-class dwelling and shop with 14 inhabited rooms. Hamilton continued to occupy No. 16 until at least 1918 and remained recorded as occupant until 1928, when Mr Frederick H. Stringer purchased the property along with the adjoining Nos. 14 and 15 from Sarah White. That year the upper floors were converted into offices while the ground floor was retained as a shop, occupied by a Mr J. C. Burkley. The ground floor shop was valued at £46, the upper offices at between £6 15s. and £31, giving a total building value of £105 5s., which remained unchanged until the cancellation of the Annual Revisions in 1930.

No. 16 was listed as missing in the 1935 First General Revaluation of property in Northern Ireland. The building survived the destruction wrought on Belfast city centre during the 1941 Blitz, and was included in the Second General Revaluation, which commenced in 1956. By the 1950s the building had been acquired by the adjoining Evangelical Bookshop, which had opened in 1926. The ground floor was occupied by L. Carroll & Co. Ltd and valued at £104 by 1972, while the upper floors were used by the Evangelical Bookshop as storage, valued at between £7 10s. and £39, giving a total building value of approximately £189 10s. by the end of the revaluation in 1972.

Patton identifies No. 16 as a red brick building — the brick now concealed beneath stucco rendering — and considers it a deliberately designed infill property intended to fill the gap between the terrace at Nos. 11–15 College Square East and the adjoining Nos. 17–25 (now demolished). He and Beckett both note that the commercialisation of the terrace took place in the early 20th century, when the construction of the Municipal Technical Building on the north-east corner of the square undermined the aesthetic quality of College Square and drove Belfast's professional classes southward to newly formed terraces on University Square near Queen's University. No. 16 College Square East was listed in 1976 and at the time of listing was in use as an electronics showroom.