Anderson and McCauley, 1-9 Donegall Place, 2-16 Castle Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 5AA

Anderson & McAuley's Department Store is a large, attached, corner-sited sandstone building of five storeys, purpose-built as a department store and dated 1899. It was designed by the Belfast architectural partnership Young & Mackenzie — formed in 1867/68 between Robert Young and his pupil John Mackenzie — and constructed by McLaughlin & Harvey using beige sandstone. It is one of the largest buildings on Donegall Place and occupies an entire city block, with its principal elevation facing east onto Donegall Place, a secondary elevation facing north onto Castle Street, and a further five-storey red brick rear block fronting onto Castle Street and Fountain Street.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The building is rectangular on plan. The roof is hidden behind a parapet wall featuring decoratively carved Arabesque panels to the east elevation and a lozenge-shaped balustrade parapet to the north elevation, both punctuated by squat panelled piers with segmental pediments surmounted by blocks. The curved corner at the junction of Donegall Place and Castle Street is surmounted by a glazed iron clock set within a decorative sandstone surround, with raised digits reading '1899', surmounted by a crown and flanked by a pair of panels with cartouches.

The upper floors are faced in sandstone ashlar, surmounted by a frieze embellished with rosettes and fluting, topped by a dentilled crown cornice with egg-and-dart moulding. The side elevation carries a plain frieze in place of the enriched version on the principal front. The fourth floor has channel-rusticated walling. The rear block is built in red brick laid in Flemish bond, with continuous moulded sandstone sill courses at each floor level and a dentilled crown cornice at the top.

Window openings to the first, second and third floors are square-headed with architrave surrounds, keystones and moulded sills, now fitted with replacement steel windows. The fourth floor has round-headed openings with keystones and moulded sills. The rear block has square-headed openings with architrave surrounds, keystones and replacement steel windows.

PRINCIPAL EAST ELEVATION

The east elevation is articulated as four bays wide plus the curved corner, each bay projecting as a shallow bow containing three window openings and flanked by pilasters that carry a continuous cornice at each level. The carved lettering 'ANDERSON & McCAULEY' appears on the parapet of the central bow. The fourth-floor pilasters are channel-rusticated; those to the third floor have panels embellished with guilloche ornament. The second-floor windows have scrolled keystones, fluted friezes and dentilled cornices with a central waved pediment, flanked by panelled pilasters adorned with foliate carvings. The first-floor windows are flanked by part-fluted pilasters supporting a bowed entablature punctuated by ancons, surmounted by a decorative frieze embellished with Arabesque carvings and amorini, all framed by panelled pilasters with cartouches bearing the monogram 'AM'. Large display windows at ground-floor level are flanked by polished granite Doric pilasters with fluted necks supporting a polished granite fascia, surmounted by a sandstone cornice with egg-and-dart moulding that also serves as the sill course for the first floor.

SECONDARY NORTH ELEVATION

The north elevation onto Castle Street is fifteen windows wide, arranged in groups of three flanked by pilasters that carry continuous moulded cornices at each level. The pilasters to the second, third and fourth floors are unadorned, while those to the first floor are detailed to match the principal elevation, with a plain frieze above. Polished granite shopfronts continue across this elevation, with splayed polished granite stall risers carrying applied brass lettering reading 'ANDERSON & McCAULEY'. The south side elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at numbers 6–9 Donegall Place.

GROUND-FLOOR SHOPFRONTS AND REAR BLOCK

Polished granite shopfronts with polished granite Doric pilasters are carried across both the principal and north elevations and continued on the rear block. The rear red brick block is detailed as described above.

INTERIOR

The interior was largely lost around 2000. Historical records note that the original store contained a luxury marble staircase, valued at £342 at the time of a 1900 revaluation, which has since been removed. The original design reportedly included 29 carved heads adorning the first-floor windows. Six escalators were added in 1989 and the interior floor space was increased by approximately 20,000 square feet at that time, but little historic interior fabric or detailing now survives.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Anderson & McAuley's was established by Sir Robert Anderson (1837–1921) and John B. McAuley (died 1888), who first opened premises on this site around 1861. Their original building was a more modest three-storey structure known as Donegall Place Buildings, shared with other fashion and textile retailers and designed by Thomas Jackson (1807–1890), a Belfast-based engineer who was official architect to the Ulster Bank. Over three decades the firm's growing success prompted the demolition of that earlier building, which had been valued at £470, and its replacement with the present department store. Construction took five years, from 1895 to 1899, and upon completion the new building was valued at £1,885, rising to £2,085 in a revaluation the following year.

Young & Mackenzie were selected as architects having previously designed the Robinson & Cleaver building — a six-storey linen store also on Donegall Place — in 1886–88. Architectural opinion on the outcome has been divided: C. E. B. Brett considered the result "comparatively insipid" compared to Robinson & Cleaver, judging even the carving to be of lesser quality, while M. Patton placed Young & Mackenzie among the small number of architects who "at the end of the 19th century set the seal on the phenomenal growth in the wealth of the Donegall Place shops."

A large rear extension was added in 1912, valued at £425. In 1923 the store's rateable value was raised to £4,000; the owners successfully appealed and it was settled at £2,450, where it remained until the Annual Revisions were cancelled in 1930. By the 1935 First General Revaluation it was valued at £5,000. The store survived the 1941 Belfast Blitz with only superficial damage. In the postwar Second General Revaluation, commencing 1956, the value rose to £19,000 before being reduced to £16,880 by the end of the revaluation in 1972. In 1927 the store issued its first catalogue, the Anderley Gazette, which declared that "all roads lead to Anderson & McAuley's, the shopping centre of Ulster." In 1956 it became one of the first stores in Ulster to install escalators.

Since the 1920s, Anderson & McAuley also leased the adjoining numbers 7–9 Donegall Place from Lindsay Bros, and the ground-floor shopfronts of numbers 1–9 were linked. The building was listed in 1979. The store remained a family-owned business until financial difficulties led to its closure in 1993, with the loss of 300 jobs, ending one of the last major family-run department stores in Northern Ireland. Following closure, McLaughlin & Harvey — who had carried out the original construction — were contracted to convert the building into separate retail units. The building, now known as McAuley House, continues in commercial use, with the formerly conjoined shopfronts and units now separated and occupied by individual clothing and retail companies.

SETTING

The building fronts onto Donegall Place at its junction with Castle Street and Royal Avenue, spanning an entire city block, with the rear block fronting onto Fountain Street to the west. Donegall Place was originally the site of Belfast Castle gardens before the castle's destruction in 1708. In the 1780s the street was laid out to connect the original 17th-century town centre with the White Linen Hall, erected in 1787. Originally called Linen Hall Street, it was renamed Donegall Place around 1810, when the area around the Linen Hall became Donegall Square in honour of the Second Marquis of Donegall. In the early 19th century the street consisted mainly of private dwellings occupied by leading citizens; commercial development intensified throughout that century, accelerated by the expansion of the town and the granting of city status in 1888. Only one original Georgian building now survives on the street. The building sits within a conservation area.