Complete Entertainment Exchange, 36-40 Ann Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 4EB

Complete Entertainment Exchange, 36-40 Ann Street, Belfast

A three-storey, three-bay commercial building erected in 1931–1933 to designs by Harry Wilson, architect for Montague Burton's tailoring company. The building stands at the corner of Ann Street and Telfair Street, which was formerly a street but is now a passageway with no through access.

The structure is a steel-framed building of the Art Deco movement, largely rectangular on plan. The principal north elevation is symmetrical, three bays wide, and clad in faience panels with ornate decorative motifs. The faience work displays varied influences including classicism, Cubism with zigzag ornaments, and most notably a pair of stylized elephant heads. Windows on the upper floors are recessed, multi-pane timber-framed arrangements of frosted glass. A panel containing a zigzag motif separates the first and second floors, and a heavily moulded continuous cill course runs across the first-floor windows. The ground floor has been entirely modified with aluminium-framed windows, a door, and modern plastic fascia and signage. Moulded piers flank the principal windows, extending from above the fascia to the second-floor lintel, each topped by a stylized elephant head. An interlinking zigzag motif panel flanks the outer side of the central windows, linked by a horizontal panel across the central bay. Above this arrangement is a blank elongated panel with triangulated motifs to its outer edges, surmounted by a stepped faience-clad parapet with a decorative central motif.

The east elevation has a stepped parapet and is otherwise blank, abutted by an adjoining building. The south elevation is three storeys of blank red-brick with a recessed section to the far left, with vestiges of a previously abutting building remaining. The west elevation has faience cladding on its left side with a single window on the upper floors, similarly detailed to the principal elevation but without vertical pier elements. The ground floor is shopped. The remainder of the west elevation is red-brick, some painted, with plain window openings having reconstituted stone lintels (painted) and projecting cills. The left-centre section is two openings wide with an irregular window arrangement; the right side is three openings wide, with all windows blocked except those on the second storey.

A lower three-storey red-brick return extends to the rear. The flat roof is of undetermined material and is concealed behind a parapet. The stepped faience-clad solid parapets extend to the northern portion, with red-brick parapets to the southern end. Concealed rainwater goods include some uPVC elements and replacement metal downpipes to the south block. The primary elevations are largely clad in faience panels across the upper floors; the remainder are red-brick laid to English garden wall bond.

The building was constructed as commercial premises for Montague Burton, the menswear tailor and retailer. Harry Wilson, the company architect during the 1920s and 1930s, designed the Belfast branch during a period of substantial expansion for Burton. The construction was supervised by Conway & Conway, who are credited with the design in contemporary records. Montague Burton, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrived in England in 1900, founded the business and had opened five men's tailoring shops in northern England by 1913. By 1929, the company operated four hundred shops, factories, and mills; Burton was knighted in 1931 for services to industrial relations. The company remains one of the larger United Kingdom high street retailers.

The building entered valuation records in 1934 as a shop on the ground floor, valued at £260, with offices on the first and second floors valued at £150 and £100 respectively. These upper-floor offices were initially sublet and accessed by a separate entrance in Telfair Street. Contemporary valuer's notes describe the ground floor as a "lofty shop" approximately 14 feet high, with a wooden-block floor, electric lighting, central heating, and a good modern shop front in "typical Burton style". The plan shows a central entrance with fitting rooms to the left and stairs to the right. In 1937, the first floor was partially incorporated into the tailor's shop with a consequent rise in valuation, whilst the second floor was let to Gardner Dance Studio from the 1930s to the 1970s. The ground and first floors remained a Burton's branch until approximately 1990, when it was taken over by Cassidy's Menswear. The building currently operates as a second-hand electronics store.

Although of interest as one of the few buildings of the early twentieth century in this style, the structure is not among the best examples of the type and has been compromised by alterations and loss of historic fabric and detailing. The building is noted as a record only, not formally listed.