Northern Whig, 2-10 Bridge Street, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 1LU

The Northern Whig, 2–10 Bridge Street, Belfast

Originally known as the Commercial Buildings, this is a three-storey classical former commercial building dating from 1819–1820, designed by the Belfast-based architect John McCutcheon. It stands at the corner of Bridge Street and Waring Street and is one of the very few surviving Georgian buildings in Belfast city centre. The listing extends to the former offices and their railings.

The building is rectangular on plan, corner-sited with its principal elevation facing north onto Waring Street and a secondary elevation facing west onto Bridge Street. The flat roof is hidden behind a lead-lined blocking course, with a central raised datestone inscribed MDCCCXX. Replacement steel hoppers and downpipes serve the east elevation only.

The principal Waring Street elevation is built in Leinster granite ashlar over a rusticated granite ashlar ground floor, with rusticated granite quoins and a projecting plinth course. The symmetrical composition is five windows wide at its centre, with a colonnaded two-storey central block flanked by recessed entrance bays that connect to three-storey advanced pavilion blocks at each end. A dentilled granite entablature runs across the entire elevation, supported on engaged Giant Ionic order columns to the upper floor of the central block, paired at each end. In place of second-floor windows on the central block are decorative carved Portland limestone panels, while the first floor has horizontally-divided round-headed window openings with plain stone transoms. Elsewhere on the principal elevation the second floor has diminished windows with 3/3 timber sash windows; the remaining windows are replacement 6/6 timber sash windows throughout. At ground floor level, voussoired round-headed recesses house flat-arched window openings, with a central door opening fitted with replacement timber doors and an overlight. The flanking entrance bays each have Portland limestone Doric porticos with half-fluted columns, responding pilasters, and a full entablature, fitted with replacement double-leaf timber doors and overlights. All window openings have voussoired granite flat arches with granite sills.

The secondary west elevation onto Bridge Street is seven windows wide in redbrick, with gauged brick flat-arched window openings and replacement timber sash windows. A plain granite frieze and cornice surmounts this elevation, with rusticated granite quoins. The ground floor has five fixed-pane display windows framed by rusticated piers supporting a frieze and mutuled cornice, the frieze inscribed NORTHERN WHIG AND BELFAST POST and framed by paired angled brackets. The first floor has single-pane timber sash windows, while the second floor has diminished openings with replacement 3/3 timber sash windows. A replacement shop front and pub front, including reconstituted stone surrounds to the display windows, was inserted around 1950. Replacement double-leaf timber doors, set slightly off-centre, are topped with a rendered overpanel bearing copper lettering reading NORTHERN WHIG HOUSE and provide access to the upper floors; a further pair of replacement double-leaf timber doors to the left gives access to the ground-floor bar.

The east side elevation is also redbrick, three storeys tall, with irregularly placed flat-arched window openings fitted with replacement timber sash windows and concrete sills. A redbrick accretion, possibly housing a lift shaft, rises from the centre of the rear elevation, and blocked openings on this elevation indicate a previous use. The south elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at numbers 12–14.

The building is corner-sited at the junction of Bridge Street and Waring Street. A front railed area to the principal Waring Street elevation is enclosed by replacement steel railings on a low concrete plinth wall with matching steel gates.

Much of the building's historic character and fabric survives, including the mid-20th-century rebuilt interior, though this has been compromised by more recent changes.

Historical background

The Commercial Buildings were constructed in 1819–1820, replacing a row of two-storey thatched cottages that had previously occupied the site; one of these cottages is recorded as having been the home of the United Irishman Samuel Neilson. The foundation stone was laid on St Patrick's Day 1819 by the Second Marquis of Donegall, and the building opened for commerce on 1 November 1820.

John McCutcheon also supervised the erection of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, completed in 1814. His design for the Commercial Buildings was executed in Irish granite. The architectural historian C. E. B. Brett suggested that the façade looks as though it ought to be attributed to a more sophisticated designer, raising the possibility that McCutcheon was employed to supervise a scheme conceived by an unknown architect. Paul Larmour described the building as an important landmark in the history of both the architectural and commercial development of Belfast — the first truly monumental public building in the town — while noting that it effectively replaced the Exchange Buildings opposite as one of the most important business places in the city.

When first valued in the Townland Valuations of around 1830, the Commercial Buildings were rated at £508. Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1837 recorded that the building had cost £20,000 to construct and comprised an excellent commercial hotel, a spacious newsroom, an elegant assembly room above it, a piazza area for merchants, and numerous offices principally occupied by professional men. Lewis also noted that the Waring Street façade was decorated with eight Ionic columns to the first floor. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1860, the building had been subdivided into individual retail units addressed as numbers 2–14 Bridge Street, with a total rateable value of £1,067, divided between eight shops and warehouses; parts of the upper floors were in use as dining space. One unit, number 8 Bridge Street, was recorded not as a retail premises but as a private dwelling, occupied by a Mr David Walker. Ownership remained with the original shareholders and Trustees of Commercial Buildings who had financed the construction.

By the Belfast Revaluation of 1900 the total value had fallen to £725. The ground floor units were at that time occupied by a tobacconist, an Irish Novelty gift shop, a linen warehouse, a drapers, and a café operated by William Henry Seawright at the largest unit, number 12. The estate agency and property auctioneers Crotty and Aiken occupied number 8 Bridge Street before moving to the neighbouring 1 Donegall Street in 1911. The upper floors continued as offices, with a reading room and the Commercial Hotel also operating from the building. By 1918 the majority of the space was occupied by A. Anderson's tailors shop, while the upper floors had been taken over by the Belfast Sailor's and Soldier's Service Club, a charitable ex-servicemen's organisation, and by the accountancy firm John Lawther and Co.

In 1919 the Commercial Buildings was acquired by the Northern Whig newspaper, which had been established in 1823. The newspaper carried out an extensive renovation of the interior and completely rebuilt the Bridge Street façade in redbrick. This conversion work was undertaken by the local designer Thomas William Henry, who worked primarily on commercial contracts in Belfast city centre between approximately 1920 and 1950. The Northern Whig took possession of the refurbished offices and printing works in 1923. Under the First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland in 1935, the building was valued at £1,250, with the structure itself valued at £670 and the heavy industrial printing machinery at £580.

In May 1941, during the Belfast Blitz, a Luftwaffe bomb struck the building and the resulting fire destroyed the interior offices, leaving only a charred shell. Owing to the durability of the Irish granite, the Waring Street façade of 1819–1820 survived, while the Bridge Street façade was mostly destroyed. The Northern Whig continued to publish even on the day after the bombing, with assistance from other newspapers, and temporarily relocated to the Belfast Telegraph's offices on Royal Avenue. The building was subsequently rebuilt; the current Bridge Street façade dates from the post-war reconstruction, with further restoration work carried out in 1959, described at the time as removing the last scars of bomb damage. Under the second revaluation of 1956–1972, the restored building was valued at £850.

The Northern Whig ceased publication in 1963 due to declining sales. In 1965 the Glencairn Trust converted the building into commercial office space, and its value was increased to £1,857. The building was listed in 1975. An interior renovation had also been carried out in 1886 by the Belfast-based engineer Robert Graeme Watt.

In 1997 Botanic Inns purchased the building and converted the majority of it into a licensed restaurant and bar trading under the name The Northern Whig; a portion of the upper floor remains in office use. The main decorative features of the ground-floor bar are three Soviet statues, formerly situated at the Communist Party Headquarters in Prague, where they had been commissioned to commemorate the 1917 Revolution; they were acquired by Botanic Inns and now stand as historical decorations in the bar.

Brett noted that in addition to the post-Blitz reconstruction, the building had also been affected by the construction of an inappropriate redbrick garage between the Northern Whig and the adjoining numbers 12–16 Bridge Street, erected in 1955, and by a 1958 extension connecting the two buildings, which he described as a disastrous sandwich filling between the two, criticising the roofline, window spacing, and the absence of any corresponding stringcourse or other feature to relate the new work to the old. Nevertheless, Brett concluded that despite all the wrongs committed to it, the building survives with real dignity.