53 University Road, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT7 1NF

No. 53 University Road is a substantial three-storey late Georgian style terraced house built between 1840 and 1843, forming the northernmost unit of a group of four matching properties. The terrace as a whole, originally known as 'Botanic View', occupies the west side of University Road between Camden Street to the north and Fitzwilliam Street to the south. In addition to these four houses, the terrace includes three similar but slightly lower three-storey houses of around 1840–41 and a short two-storey brick grouping of 1852 at the southern end, all now converted to flats or offices. The entire group was extensively renovated around 1984, when all properties were divided into flats and new stairwell returns were added to the rear, replacing the original individual rear returns.

The front elevation, which faces east, is asymmetrical. On the ground floor to the left is the original entrance doorway, now no longer functioning as such since access to the flats is taken from the rear stairwell return. The doorway has been adapted so that its traditional-style panelled and glazed door now acts as a window. It retains panelled pilaster jambs and is topped with a plain rectangular fanlight. The entire ensemble is framed with plain pilasters carrying decorative console brackets, which support a cornice hood with a tympanum-like blocking course above. Steps and a path remain in front of the former door. To the right of the doorway are two flat-arched windows, now boarded up. At first-floor level, directly above the ground-floor windows, are two sash windows with Georgian panes in a 6/6 arrangement. Two similar but shorter sash windows appear at second-floor level in the same vertical alignment. The ground floor is finished in square-channelled rusticated render, painted in a darker shade than the upper floors, which are in plain render with simple moulded surrounds to the window openings. It is probable that the first- and second-floor levels were originally in brick. In-and-out bevelled quoins appear at the right-hand (north) end of the façade, with the quoins also painted in the darker ground-floor shade. The north-facing gable is finished in plain render with quoins as before but has no openings.

To the right-hand side of the rear, west-facing elevation is a large full-height stairwell return shared with no. 55, which it also partially overlaps. This was erected around 1984. On its west face are sash windows at first and second half-landing levels, the upper one slightly shorter than the lower. On the north face of the return, to the left on the ground floor, is a doorway with a recent security door giving access to the stairwell and to the ground-floor flat of no. 53 and that of no. 55. Immediately to the right of this doorway is a single-storey flat-roofed brick projection housing the dustbins for the three flats. The south face of the return mirrors the north face arrangement, with small sash windows with Georgian panes in a 4/2 arrangement at both first- and second-floor levels to the right. On the rear facade of the main body of the building, to the left of the return, there are two windows to each floor. On each floor the left-hand window is larger than the right-hand one, and the second-floor windows are shorter than those below. The ground-floor windows are covered with security grilles. The upper-floor windows have Georgian-paned sash frames: at first floor, 6/6 and 4/2; at second floor, 6/3 and 4/2. The entire rear elevation is rendered in the same manner as the upper floors of the front, with quoins to the left painted in a darker shade as before. The main roof is gabled and slated, with a mono-pitched, lean-to-style slated roof over the return. A tall rendered chimneystack to the north has a string course and decorative matching chimney pots. There are bracketed verge courses to the front and plainer versions to the rear, both with recent-looking moulded guttering. Downspouts are modern and square in section. At the front, a small garden is enclosed by low rendered walls and filled with shrubbery.

The historical background of the terrace is closely bound up with the early suburban development of south Belfast. Before the early 19th century, the present University Road formed the main route south from Belfast towards Dublin, running along the Malone Ridge. The land to either side consisted of long, narrow strip farms sloping westward down towards the Bog Meadows. From the mid-18th century many of these farms were leased by the Donegall estate to Belfast merchants and worked by undertenants whose farmhouses were scattered along the road. The construction of the present Lisburn Road in 1819 cut through these farms, and by 1839 the Ulster Railway had been driven through their lower fields. From 1823 the Donegall estate began granting perpetual leases on land to the south of Belfast, which opened the area to developers. One such developer was John Alexander, whose family had held a lease on 31 acres in the townland of Lower Malone since the early 18th century and who acquired the land outright from Lord Donegall in 1823 for £480. It was on this land that Alexander built the three-storey portion of the 'Botanic View' terrace — the present nos. 53–65 University Road — between 1840 and 1843. He subsequently parcelled out adjacent portions to other developers, leading to the construction of Fitzwilliam Place (nos. 71–75) in 1846–48, dwellings along the newly laid out Fitzwilliam Street (nos. 2–8) around 1849–50, and Camden Terrace along the newly laid out Camden Street in 1849–52, with the two-storey southern portion of Botanic View completed by the latter year. These developments, along with others nearby such as Fountainville Terrace, Upper and Lower Crescent, Prospect and Claremont Terraces, and University Square to the east, marked the beginning of the suburbanisation of south Belfast and the movement of the town's professional and commercial classes away from its centre. The earliest known inhabitants of Botanic View, recorded in late 1840s and early 1850s directories, included a surgeon, an engineer, a drawing master, and various businessmen.

The whole of Botanic View remained in Alexander family ownership until 1881, when nos. 53–65 were sold to Robert Kelso Mathewson. In 1950 the properties passed into the ownership of Queen's University, with no. 67 acquired separately by the University in 1963. In 1982 the University sold the entire grouping to the Malone Housing Association. Up to that point the properties had largely continued in use as private dwellings, some occupied latterly by University staff and students, though no. 55 served as a temporary post office and nos. 57–59 as a branch of the Ulster Bank in 1971–72. No. 59 was demolished in 1979 after sustaining damage in a bomb blast. In the mid-1980s the Malone Housing Association converted the whole group into flats, rebuilding no. 59 in the process. Nos. 53, 55, 57 and the rebuilt 59 each provide three flats, with six flats shared between nos. 61, 63, 65 and 67. All original rear returns were demolished to make way for the new shared stairwell projections. In March 2000 the entire group was reconveyed to Queen's University. The property sits within a conservation area.