81-87 Academy Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 2LS

Nos 81-87 Academy Street, Belfast, is a three-storey L-shaped building constructed in the 1950s in the Modernist style. It occupies a prominent position on the south side of Academy Street, extending to the rear to form elevations on Hector Street and Exchange Street.

Built in brick laid in stretcher bond, the building has a flat roof to its front section on Academy Street, unseen behind a parapet topped with concrete coping and metal rail. The rear section has a pitched roof with corrugated metal sheeting, while the rear return is flat roofed with overhanging eaves and timber soffit. All rainwater goods are uPVC.

The windows are square-headed and grouped horizontally, with raised painted render surrounds and painted concrete lintels. Divisions between windows are marked by curved painted render. The frames are metal. On the north elevation, the second-floor windows contain six panes with top-hung lights, while the first-floor windows have nine panes. A deep modern plastic fascia runs the full width of the ground floor, where the shopfront is obscured by shutters.

The south elevation comprises two sections: to the east a gabled roof with rendered ground floor, and to the west a flat roof with overhanging eaves. In the gabled section, the first floor has six windows with fifteen panes and central six pivot-hinged lights, with flush concrete cills. The ground floor contains three windows, the eastern one being a later nine-paned casement. A shuttered door is positioned to the west, with two double-plank timber doors featuring diagonal planked panels to the east, one covered by metal sheet. The flat-roofed section has four windows on each floor with projecting concrete cills and continuous concrete lintels, with a flush timber door in the east bay.

The west elevation has a full-height glazed uPVC window incorporating a glass door, flanked by rendered panels. The wider southern panel features a bull's eye window with raised surrounds on each floor. The remaining elevation is a blank rendered wall, now forming a boundary to a car park.

The building was refurbished in 1991 by Lyons Architects, at which time the current glazing and southern entrance lobby were added.

Historically, the site was occupied from the 1870s by a Victorian bonded store, originally belonging to Gallagher & Co., a local tobacconist company. By the turn of the 20th century, the store had passed to Murray, Sons & Co. Ltd., another tobacco company with its main factory at Whitehall Tobacco Works on the Linfield Road. The bonded store was valued at £100 during Murray's occupation. W. H. Milligan & Co., also tobacco and snuff manufacturers, took possession around 1910. By the First General Revaluation in 1935, William J. Graham was recorded as occupant, at which time the building's value had risen to £280. The building lay unoccupied in 1943 and was demolished between 1943 and 1956, being replaced by the present structure on a reduced portion of the original site.

On completion, the new building was utilised as warehouse and storage space for Leacock & Co. (Belfast) Ltd., a linen firm originally based in London. The second floor also housed office space for M. C. Logan architects during the 1950s and 1970s. By the end of the second revaluation period (1956-72), the building's value had reached £870. The 1991 refurbishment was carried out for Nicholas McKenna & Co., a Ballymena-based catering equipment manufacturer.