19 McMaster Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT5 4HP

19 McMaster Street is a two-storey, single-bay late Victorian terraced parlour house built around 1896, located on the west side of McMaster Street in the Ballymacarrett area of East Belfast. It was developed by John McMaster to designs by J. Frazer and Son, and forms part of a complete terrace of 37 parlour houses built in several phases between 1899 and 1908. McMaster Street is the only late Victorian working-class terrace in Belfast to have survived in reasonably original condition, and the street was listed in 1987 and designated a conservation area in 1994.

The roof is pitched natural slate with clay ridge tiles, a central rooflight window on the east slope, and a modern red brick chimney stack at the south side. Painted ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods are supported on a projecting polychromatic brick eaves course over an ovolo-moulded corbel course. The walls are laid in English garden-wall bond using red brick with alternating courses of headers and stretchers, and are ornamented with three polychromatic brick string courses, including a continuous brick and sill course at first-floor level, together with decorative detailing above the first-floor windows. All polychromatic brickwork is now painted, except the decorative detailing above the first-floor windows. Windows are one-over-one timber sliding sashes. The entrance door is a replacement timber panelled door with glazing. Both windows and door are set within camber-headed reveals with polychromatic brick chamfered reveals and voussoirs, and projecting masonry sills.

The principal east-facing elevation has the entrance door to the right, comprising the replacement timber panelled door with a square-headed transom light, accessed by a rendered threshold. A window sits to the left of the entrance at ground-floor level, and two windows at first-floor level are offset slightly to the left. The north gable abuts number 17 McMaster Street and the south gable abuts number 21. The rear of the house and yard were not accessible for inspection. The rear elevation is enclosed by high-level stretcher-bonded modern red brick walling with a painted, vertically-sheeted timber entrance door at the centre, accessed via a narrow entry running north to south between the back yards of Parker Street and McMaster Street.

The house sits at the centre of the west two-storey terrace block, facing directly onto McMaster Street. The wide street, formerly cobbled, is now largely laid in concrete with small cobbled areas remaining at each end. The house opens directly onto a wide pavement with granite kerbs and original lamp posts fitted with electric lighting, which were formerly gas lights. Original tiled street signage survives at the north and south ends of the street. The street narrows towards Major Street at its southern end.

The houses in this terrace were built to a notably high specification for workers' housing, incorporating running water and flush toilets, which were emerging technologies for this type of dwelling at the time. Building controls required each house to have a rear entrance, a back yard, and a toilet. Gas was piped in for lighting, though electricity did not become commonplace until the 1930s, and lamp-lighters and window-tappers were daily visitors to the street. The houses are of the parlour type, and number 19 in particular contained three bedrooms and was fitted with gas. When first assessed in the valuation records around 1900, it was valued at £8 along with numbers 13 to 37, which were slightly smaller than the taller houses at the northern end of the street. The rent was five shillings per week and construction costs were estimated at £76.

The first recorded occupant was David Currie, a ship joiner, who leased the house from the developer John McMaster. The 1901 census records him living there with his wife and three children aged four, six, and eight. A succession of tenants followed, all reflecting the industrial character of the surrounding area: James Johnston, carpenter (1905); Samuel Baillie, riveter (1907); R. Ferguson, joiner (1911). By the 1911 census the house was occupied by Stafford William Woods, a Scottish mechanic, living with his wife, four children, and a female boarder employed as a winder at the ropeworks. Later tenants included James Clarke, labourer (1914); Thomas Greer, checker (1921); R. Albert, a plater's helper who assisted crews in bolting iron plates onto the sides of vessels (1925); and W. J. Brennan, storeman (1934).

Number 19 escaped damage during the Belfast Blitz. Belfast suffered four air raids during April and May 1941, during which over half the city's housing stock was damaged. McMaster Street was targeted in raids on the nights of 7–8 April and 4–5 May 1941, and the 1942 street directory records that most houses in the street had been vacated, probably as a result of fire damage. Number 19 was unaffected, however, and by 1943 a new resident, John Haire, was listed. Mrs Hilda Haire, probably John's widow, was the householder in 1965, followed by Robert Wilson, draughtsman, from 1969 to at least 1980.

The terrace stands close to the former Harland and Wolff shipyards, which by 1900 were employing around 9,000 men on Queen's Island. Ballymacarrett was also home to ropeworks, linen manufacture, engineering, and fertiliser industries. In the mid-19th century the area had been one of fields, cottages, and mansions around an industrial core; by the turn of the 20th century it had been progressively built over with terraced housing for the workers who drove Belfast's industrial prosperity. The designers, J. Frazer and Son, were active between the 1890s and 1910s and were responsible for several similar terraced streets in Belfast, including Chadwick Street and Meadowbank Place. Redevelopment in the 1970s led to the demolition of many comparable terraces in the area. McMaster Street survives as the only such terrace in Belfast remaining in reasonably original condition. Two of the houses in the street have been restored by Hearth. Number 19 has group value with the other listed buildings in McMaster Street and is of local interest.