Former Northern Bank, 108-110 Victoria Street, Belfast, County Antrim, BT1 3GN

Former Northern Bank, 108–110 Victoria Street (corner of May Street), Belfast

This is a former bank building constructed between 1919 and 1921 to designs by Godfrey William Ferguson (c.1855–1939), a Belfast-based architect who served as official planner to the Northern Banking Company and was responsible for at least 21 branch designs across Northern Ireland. The builder was Henry Laverty and Sons, a local firm. The building stands three storeys tall with a mansard roof attic, and was designed in a free Classical style throughout in Portland stone. In the early 21st century a fifth floor was added; this has a flat roof and is set well back from the original elevation, so as not to intrude on the principal façades.

The external walls are ashlar Portland stone, rusticated at ground floor level and to the giant pilasters. Above the main body of the building runs a moulded, dentilled cornice, above which rises a parapet of alternating solid stone panels and balusters, with pedimented dormers flanked by volutes. String courses run at second floor lintel level and at first floor level above the cornice of the ground floor entablature. This entablature is inscribed with NORTHERN BANKING COMPANY LIMITED to the main elevations and ESTABLISHED 1824 to the canted corner. The mansard roof is finished in natural slate topped with copper flashing. Rainwater pipes are uPVC.

The windows are square-headed throughout and are fitted with two-pane replacement timber sashes. Those at mansard level have moulded lugged architraves and cornices of black painted timber. The second floor windows have moulded architraves. The first floor windows have triangular or segmental pediments over moulded architraves. The ground floor windows have rusticated flat arches with volute keystones. The double entrance doors are three-panelled.

The corner entrance is particularly notable: it has a flat moulded architrave with an egg and dart cornice, and a guilloche wreath surrounds a panel on the flat lintel inscribed with BANK. An overlight sits above the entablature and the stone step is curved.

The west elevation is six windows wide, with the canted corner to the south. Dormers to the north and at the canted corner define bays flanked by pilasters, and these bays have segmental pediments over the first floor windows. The third window from the north on the ground floor sits at a higher cill level than its neighbours. The south elevation is also six windows wide; the fourth window from the west is tripartite on each level. The dormer bay on this elevation matches that of the west elevation, except that the ground floor opening has been replaced by a large modern entrance screen. The east elevation is a solid red brick wall laid in English garden wall bond, with a later extension to the north finished in render. The north elevation is abutted by a modern building.

The branch was established to serve the Markets area of the city, where a number of competing banks opened at around the same time to take advantage of the concentration of merchants and traders drawn by the neighbouring markets. May's Chambers, directly opposite on the corner of May Street and Cromac Street, was built in 1919–22 as an Ulster Bank branch.

When first completed, the building was valued at £600, but the upper floors remained vacant for several years before being leased in 1925 to the Ministry of Finance for use as the registrar's office of the Court of the Land Purchase Commission. The building's rateable value fell to £334 during this period, as the Commission was exempt from taxation. The Land Purchase Commission remained until 1929, when the Board of Inland Revenue took over the first and second floor offices. In that same year the Northern Bank vacated the premises; the ground floor was converted into a shop for Alexander Curry, a shoemaker previously based on High Street, while the upper floors were let to various other tenants. The Northern Bank nonetheless continued to be recorded as owners. By 1935 the majority of the upper floor offices were lying vacant — only four of seventeen were occupied — though the ground floor continued to be used by Alexander Curry and Company. The rateable value at the time of the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935 stood at £469.

The building survived the heavy bombing of the Markets area during the Belfast Blitz of 1941. During the wartime period, the upper floors were occupied by a butter importer, a meal merchant, the County Down Committee of Agriculture, the North of Ireland Cattle Traders' Association, and various accountancy firms, while the ground floor lay vacant. By the 1950s the upper offices had also been taken over by the Registry of Deeds for Northern Ireland, with the ground floor by then used as storage rather than retail space. The rateable value stood at £809 by the end of the second general revaluation in 1972.

The building was listed in 1994. Around 2008 an extensive renovation was carried out by HPA Architects, who removed the individual offices to create open-plan accommodation on all floors and installed a new glazed meeting room at roof level. The project was undertaken with the involvement of the Environment and Heritage Service Historic Buildings Branch, which worked to ensure that the essential characteristics of the building were maintained, restored or enhanced.

The building sits on a busy junction in the city centre. Nearby listed buildings include the Royal Courts of Justice and St George's Market buildings to the east on May Street, and May's Chambers on the opposite corner of May Street and Cromac Street.