The Front Page, (McElhattons Bar), 106-110 Donegall Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 2GX

The Front Page (McElhattons Bar), 106-110 Donegall Street, Belfast

A corner-sited, multi-bay three-storey red brick public house built around 1899, located at the junction of Donegall Street and Union Street. The building is L-shaped in plan, with its principal elevation facing east onto Donegall Street and a secondary elevation facing south onto Union Street.

The exterior is detailed in the High Victorian style. The roof is pitched with artificial slate, hipped at the corner with black clay ridge tiles. Red brick chimneysstacks and ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering sit above a corbelled red brick eaves course, with cast-iron downpipes. The red brick walling is laid in English garden wall bond, decorated with continuous terracotta impost mouldings, continuous painted masonry sill courses, and Giant Ionic order red brick pilasters.

The principal east elevation is four windows wide. The second-floor windows have segmental-headed openings, while first-floor windows are round-headed with roll-moulded surrounds and a dentilled course below the second-floor windows. Giant Ionic brick pilasters flank all window openings. Decorative Arabesque terracotta panels sit above and below the second-floor windows with hood mouldings, and decorative terracotta spandrel panels ornament the first-floor windows. The original leaded glazing survives, though some windows have been replaced with timber casements. The south elevation is five windows wide, detailed as the principal elevation with additional square terracotta foliate panels.

A painted masonry pub shopfront spans both elevations, comprising three square-headed window openings on panelled stall risers flanked by pilasters with ribbed egg-and-dart capitals. Two round-headed door openings with grotesque keystones and architrave surrounds feature replacement timber panelled doors, all surmounted by a full-span fascia with paired brackets and a single decorative pediment over the principal entrance. The rendered shopfront extends across a neighbouring two-storey red brick building to the west. The north side elevation is rendered and abutted by an adjoining infill building. The rear elevation was not observed at the time of recording.

The present public house was constructed around 1899 for Felix Donnelly, a publican. The Donnelly family had run a licensed house on the premises since at least 1884. The building first appears on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2. The licensed house, shop, billiard room and yard entered valuation records in 1899, with valuer's notes recording that construction cost £1,800 including £400 for fittings. The building originally comprised the licensed premises at number 106 and a small shop at number 108, still legible on the front elevation. Living accommodation for the pub was accessed by a side door on Union Street, which also led to the billiard room on the first floor. The initial 1899 valuation was £140 for the pub and £30 for the shop.

Felix Donnelly, a spirit merchant and widower from County Tyrone, is recorded in the 1901 census as resident above the pub with his four sons, the oldest a bar assistant, another a theology student, and another a chemist's assistant. The family employed a cook and two further bar assistants, all living on the premises. The shop at number 108 was sublet to Edward Kelly, tobacconist. By the 1901 census, Edward Kelly had died and his widow Catherine Kelly, then styled "tobacco merchant", had taken over the business. She lived above the shop with her six children, sister and sister-in-law.

In 1908, the pub was taken over by Michael Rogers, and the Rogers family ran the business until the 1970s, followed by the McElhatton family. The pub is situated close to the offices of many of the main newspapers and became traditionally popular with journalists, hence its name. The shop at number 108 was run as a separate tobacconist business until the 1930s, thereafter operating as a snackery and a catechetical book store in the 1950s, before being incorporated into the pub around 1970.