Mayfair Building, Arthur Square, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 4FE

The Mayfair Building is a distinctive red brick commercial building in the Art Nouveau style, built in 1906–7 to designs by the Belfast architects Blackwood & Jury. It rises four storeys with an attic and is ornamented with ashlar sandstone stripes and pilasters, overhanging eaves, and an octagonal corner turret. The building occupies a prominent position on Arthur Square in the city centre, enclosing the north side of Cornmarket and Arthur Square, and stands alongside other listed buildings including the Grand Restaurant and the Masonic Lodge.

The building's external finishes comprise red brick walls with gingery sandstone trims and pitched natural slate roofs with sheeted overhanging eaves featuring ogee gutters and ornamental rainwater goods.

The William Street South elevation presents a three-bay composition rising three storeys high. The ground floor contains a shop with original ventilation strips and long twelve-pane windows set beneath a sandstone entablature. The first floor windows are triple-light with outer bays featuring segmental heads and a Diocletian window to the centre. Second floor windows are segmental-headed double-hung sashes paired to the outer bays with stone stripes, whilst third floor windows are plain double-hung sashes with stone lintels in rounded brick reveals. The central bay projects slightly forward and is capped by an Art Nouveau gable in brick with stone trimming, whilst the outer bays terminate in deep boarded gables. An Art Nouveau script "Mayfair" lettering appears on a convex string course at the base of the central gable. At the corner to Arthur Square stands an octagonal turret with bulging stone detail and an ogival roof, rising from a scooped stone portico that shelters the corner entrance. The rainwater goods include ogee gutters mounted on curly iron brackets and square downpipes with ornamental hoppers. The roof is steeply pitched slate with tall slender chimneys.

The Arthur Square elevation is similar in character to the William Street elevation but presents four bays wide at first floor, with the central two bays set forward and terminating in the wider main gable of the building. This gable features a set-back attic storey and a sandstone apex finial; paired windows to the outer bays, which are gabled. The "Mayfair" lettering appears on this elevation also. The ground floor has been entirely modernised with contemporary shops.

The Arthur Street elevation follows the pattern of the William Street elevation but omits the corner entrance and turret, and includes an apparent office entrance beneath the central bay.

The building was constructed for the Arthur Square Development Company by contractor Robert Corry. The expanded metal company of Hartlepool supplied expanded steel and concrete flooring throughout, a large illustration of which was used for the company's advertising. The concrete and steel structure is noteworthy from an engineering perspective.

The site previously contained houses, shops and a night refuge, but in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been occupied by the town's Shambles. The junction of Ann Street and Cornmarket is one of Belfast's oldest areas, having formed a focal point as early as 1685. By the late eighteenth century it had acquired much of its present character, with Arthur Square listed in the 1819 Directory. The area was pedestrianised in the late 1960s, replacing a triple-branched gas lamp that had stood at the centre of a paved and cobbled circle in the 1950s.

When Blackwood & Jury's designs were announced in March 1906, the Irish Builder commented that the new block would be "a great improvement to this locality, especially as it will be a very handsome and important building". Construction was underway by November 1906. An illustration in the Irish Builder in 1907 shows the building as originally intended; the chimneys shown there appear to have been departures from the final design as executed.

The building entered valuation records in 1907–8 with 29 lettings comprising shops (valued together at over £100) and a motor house on the ground floor, and offices and caretaker's apartments on the upper floors. Early ground floor occupants included Parke & Wilson, merchant and ladies' tailors, and the Mayfair Café (recorded in the 1910 Street Directory). The 1908 street directory records several solicitors' offices, a tax surveyor and a law agent on the upper floors, together with William Farley, a police pensioner and caretaker from County Derry, who occupied four rooms with his wife (1911 census). By 1910 occupants included the Ulster Unionist Council, the Northern Law Society, and the Income Tax Office for the district. The architect Ernest Woods also had offices here in 1910. The 1918 street directory records G Baird, a hatter and outfitter occupying two ground floor shops, and Joseph Braddell & Son, Gun Rifle, Revolver, Fishing Rod and Tackle Manufacturers in the other shop. Shops facing onto Ann Street were occupied by a solicitor's practice and W Hamilton & Co, Seedsmen, Nurserymen and Florists. W J Crean was employed as a lift attendant.

The corner cupola is noted as owing something to the example of Norman Shaw, but the scrolled iron eaves brackets and Art Nouveau carving are typical of the work of the designer Percy Jury. The building remains in use as offices and shops. Few changes have been made to the façade since the original design, other than alterations to the shop elevations, and much historic fabric and detailing survive. The building represents a fine example of early twentieth-century commercial development and the work of a noted architectural practice, and is situated in a busy pedestrianised city centre location.