Northern Bank, 1-3 Waring Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 2DX

Northern Bank, 1-3 Waring Street, Belfast

Originally built around 1776 as Belfast's Exchange — and widely regarded as the city's earliest public building — this is an attached, symmetrical, multi-bay, two-storey, stucco-fronted Italianate former Assembly Rooms. The building was remodelled to designs by Charles Lanyon around 1845 for use as the Belfast Bank, extended to the rear by W. H. Lynn in 1875, and further extended by a link block added around 1919 to the designs of Tulloch & Fitzsimmons. It occupies a prominent city centre site at the junction of four streets, facing Bridge Street.

Origins and History

The Exchange was first erected in 1769 at the bottom of Donegall Street as a single-storey building with arcades of five arches on each side. Seven years later, in 1776, a second floor was added to serve as the Assembly Room. The architect of at least the interior was Robert Taylor — knighted shortly afterwards and described as one of the last and greatest of the English Palladians, then at the height of his fame — assisted by a Mr Cooper. The exterior, built of stone from Dunmurry, is considered by architectural historian C. E. B. Brett to be unlikely to have been Taylor's work, as it was "in the highest degree unassuming." Samuel Kirke was engaged to carry out carving but employed another man, James Forbes, to do the work in his place. An aquatint of the interior by Thomas Malton survives. The building was paid for by the Fifth Earl of Donegall, Arthur Chichester, and is the sole survivor of a number of buildings he erected at a total cost of over £20,000.

The upper rooms comprised a large Assembly Room sixty feet long and thirty feet wide, with an adjoining Card Room and Tea Room, each thirty-two feet by twenty-two feet. The building served as the focal point of the town and was used to denote the centre of Belfast for the purposes of measuring distances on milestones. The Assembly Room hosted a celebrated Meeting of Harpers from 11th to 14th July 1792, at which Wolfe Tone was in the audience and Edward Bunting, assistant organist at St Anne's Church, transcribed many ancient Irish airs and preserved them for posterity. Henry Joy McCracken was tried in the Assembly Room on 17th July 1798 and sentenced to be hanged in front of the market house at five o'clock that same afternoon.

The ground floor was originally fitted out with stalls for traders, but in 1820 the Commercial Buildings were constructed on an adjacent site in Waring Street and the merchants relocated there. By 1823 the exchange floor was no longer used for mercantile purposes, though the Assembly Room above continued to be used for town meetings and public exhibitions and entertainments. In 1830 a Belfast Fancy Ball was held here, attended by the Marquess of Donegall, with quadrilles and waltzes continuing until two in the morning when 270 guests "retired to a magnificent entertainment in the spacious piazza below." In the early 1830s the ground floor was converted into shops — Graham & Co's hat shop was recorded on the Donegall Street side by a lease of 1840, and Scott Brothers, seedsmen, nurserymen and florists, occupied the North Street side.

Lanyon's Remodelling and Later Alterations

The Belfast Bank had the building remodelled to designs by Charles Lanyon in 1845, and opened there on Monday 25th May 1846. This is considered the first building in Ireland to adopt the international Renaissance Revival, with Lanyon encasing the earlier structure in Italian-style stucco and adopting the palazzo style pioneered by Sir Charles Barry in London. Brett judges it "one of the handsomest and most satisfactory buildings in Belfast." A contemporary observer noted it had undergone "a complete metamorphosis from a large pile of unseemly black brick to one of the handsomest architectural ornaments of the town." This project is notable as one of Lanyon's earliest Belfast commissions and one that helped establish his reputation.

Arrangements for extending the bank to the North Street side were underway by 1874, with the architect being W. H. Lynn, a former apprentice of Lanyon's and soon to be regarded as Belfast's leading architect. In 1881 one of the two surviving galleries from the original upper floor was found to be in danger of collapse and had to be propped up with an oak truss. In the later 1880s the bank concluded the building had outlived its usefulness and attempted to acquire a corner site on Donegall Place and Donegall Square South for new premises; the deal fell through, and W. H. Lynn was engaged in 1895 to remodel the interior to provide more space, at which time much of Sir Robert Taylor's original work was destroyed.

The bank was extended on Donegall Street in 1919 to designs by Tulloch & Fitzsimmons, who also raised the roof of Lanyon's block and added a lantern to the top. Further extensions along North Street were constructed in 1956–9 by architects G. P. and R. H. Bell. Alterations and renovations were carried out between 1966 and 1968, increasing directors' accommodation and extending the staff canteen. In 1970 the Belfast Banking Company merged with the Northern Banking Company to form the Northern Bank, who remained in the building until at least the 1990s. The building has since been vacant for some years, finding occasional use as an arts venue.

Exterior

The roof of the principal block is a concealed pyramidal mansard in natural slate with lead ridges, surmounted by a copper-topped louvred lantern. Flat roofs cover the remaining blocks, with cast-iron hoppers and downpipes breaking through below the first-floor frieze. The roof sits behind a balustrade parapet wall, and there is a single lead-lined dormer to the front pitch.

The walls throughout are painted, ruled-and-lined stucco, channel-rusticated to the ground floor, with a moulded plinth course rising to a moulded ground-floor sill course. Vermiculated rusticated quoins feature at ground-floor level; rusticated quoins appear at upper-floor level. There is a guilloche-type panelled frieze and drip cornice over the ground floor, a continuous moulded sill course to the first floor, and a floral panelled frieze over the first floor surmounted by a deep crown cornice supported by scrolled console brackets with floral panels. Windows are square-headed with horizontally-glazed two-over-two timber sash windows throughout.

The symmetrical principal front elevation is five windows wide with a central segmental-headed entrance and a shallow prostyle Doric portico. Ground-floor window openings have voussoired heads, panelled aprons, and cast-iron sill guards. First-floor window openings are Corinthian aediculated, with pierced stucco balconettes supported on scrolled brackets punctuating the ground-floor frieze. The central door opening has a stepped surround with a scrolled keystone and decorative double-leaf panelled bronze doors with a bronze overpanel carrying raised lettering reading "BELFAST BANKING COMPANY LTD." The door opening is flanked by Doric columns and responding pilasters on raised plinths, supporting a hood cornice and balustrade over, with an elaborately carved Belfast coat of arms. The portico is enclosed to the street by concertina iron gates.

The symmetrical west side elevation is five windows wide, detailed as per the front elevation, with a central blind opening to the ground floor. A three-storey block extends to the northwest, with walling details matching the principal block but without the balustrade parapet and floral panelled frieze; it has a crown cornice without brackets. Window openings to this extension are square-headed with architrave surrounds to the first floor and horizontally-glazed two-over-two steel windows. A projecting angled side entrance porch sits in the re-entrant angle between the principal block and the extension, with a square-headed door opening with architrave surround and double-leaf hardwood doors. The side elevation to the principal block is enclosed by iron railings dating from around 1920.

The rear elevations are plain rendered, with blocked-up window openings to the northwest block only, a brick chimneystack to the west, and a further profiled rendered chimneystack to the east.

The east side elevation of the northeast rear block is two windows wide and three storeys with attic. This elevation has paired window openings with architrave surrounds; six-over-six timber sash windows to the attic storey and single-pane windows to the remainder, those to the first and second floors divided by slender colonnettes. Giant Ionic order pilasters frame each bay, supporting an architrave and modillioned crown cornice that returns to the side elevation. The pilasters rise from apron blocks above a partly channel-rusticated first floor with vermiculated quoins. The plain stucco-fronted ground floor has Doric pilasters framing the window openings supporting a full-span frieze and cornice, also returning to the side elevation.

The two-storey link building is three windows wide with a round-headed door opening to the right and a shallow prostyle Ionic portico. The roof is hidden behind a solid parapet wall with moulded coping and drip cornice. Walling details match the principal elevation with continuous moulded sill courses. First-floor window openings have lugged architrave surrounds with keystones; ground-floor openings are voussoir-headed. The door opening has oversized voussoirs and retains an original double-leaf hardwood panelled door and semi-circular fanlight with a decorative iron grille. The door opening is flanked by Ionic pilasters responding to Ionic columns with bell-flower decoration, all sharing raised plinths and supporting a balustrade hood with decorative iron gates. The east side elevation of the main block is five windows wide, detailed as per the west side elevation.

Interior

Much historic fabric and detailing survives internally, including an elaborate double-height reception hall complete with galleries. This space illustrates the successive development of the building across its various phases and represents its long history at the centre of civic life in Belfast.