First Trust Bank, 4 Queen’s Square, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT1 2AL

First Trust Bank, formerly the Northern Bank head office, is an attached symmetrical five-bay single-storey bank building over a basement, built in 1851–2 to the designs of Charles Lanyon. It stands on the east side of Victoria Street in Belfast, with its north elevation fronting Ulster Street and south elevation fronting Custom House Square.

The building exemplifies an academic interpretation of Italian Mannerist style, executed in rusticated Portland limestone ashlar on a moulded granite plinth course with granite blocking course up to a continuous sill course. The front elevation displays arcaded single-storey openings with superimposed classical orders. Round-headed window openings are set within voussoired arches with decorative cast-iron window frames featuring margin panes and roundels. Deep moulded window sills rest on advanced apron blocks inset with segmental-headed openings fitted with wrought-iron grilles and flanked by brackets rising from the plinth course. Vermiculated quoins, a raised V-profile impost course, and a full Doric entablature with triglyphs, mutules and enriched soffit complete the composition.

The symmetrical front elevation incorporates advanced bays to either end, with windows set in double-arched recesses flanked by engaged Ionic columns and responding quarter-engaged Ionic piers supporting full entablature at impost level. The central entrance is flanked by round-headed window openings set in coved and voussoired recesses with pierced balustrade to the apron blocks. A pair of Doric columns with responding quarter-engaged Doric piers frames the central arched entrance, supporting an overhanging entablature. The doorcase comprises a square-headed door opening with architrave surround flanked by engaged Ionic columns supporting full dentilled entablature with central cartouche, and a semi-circular carved panel with voussoired head and panelled soffit to the arch. Double-leaf diamond-panelled hardwood doors open onto a granite paved platform with nine nosed granite steps fitted with copper handrails on decorative cast-iron posts.

The north side elevation is five windows wide, detailed as per the end bays of the front elevation. A decorative cast-iron spiral stair provides emergency exit from one window, and a segmental-headed door opening below the easternmost window with flat-panelled iron door provides basement access. The south side elevation is similarly five windows wide with comparable detailing.

Shallow hipped natural slate roofs with lead ridges run along the front and side elevations, with a raised central section featuring a pie-ended hipped natural slate roof. A circular glazed lantern sits over the bowed rear elevation. Roofs are set behind a balustraded parapet wall with moulded coping and cast-iron rainwater goods throughout.

The rear elevation is constructed in brown brick laid in Flemish bond with a central bow. Quoins, impost and cornice return by a single bay. Gauged brick flat-arched window openings contain 6/6 timber sash windows. A four-storey extension to the rear, square on plan with a bowed rear elevation, was built circa 1987 to designs by Sam Stephenson. This extension is largely obscured from view.

The building is enclosed by decorative cast-iron railings on a granite plinth wall with matching gates to the front entrance, supported on a pair of rusticated stone piers with Doric entablatures to the capstones. These railings extend to all three elevations facing Victoria Street, Ulster Street and Custom House Square.

Historically, the Northern Bank commissioned this building at a cost of £14,000 from Lanyon, then at the height of his career. The structure was completed and opened in the summer of 1852. The Belfast Newsletter praised it as a 'new and elegant' and 'imposing' building. Contemporary sources note that a manager's and bookkeeper's house, now demolished, occupied a rear extension with an entrance on the south elevation. Griffith's Valuation records the property at £800 in 1856–64.

The interior was originally arranged with a central banking hall flanked by side-rooms and a curved section to the rear, as evidenced by an 1858 large-scale plan of Belfast. While the interior has been substantially remodelled, some external detailing is carried through to the decorative interior. The Northern Bank extended the building in the 1960s before selling it in the late 1970s to the Trustee Savings Bank, which later became First Trust. Architects Samuel Stephenson & Sons reorganised the interior in 1976 to create management suites, office accommodation and a computer centre. A rear extension intended to link the Lanyon building with the 1960s extension was built in 1986–8, also by Samuel Stephenson & Sons, with complete refurbishment of existing offices.

The building represents a major work of a prominent local architect and significant evidence of 19th-century commercial development in Belfast. Much historic fabric and external detailing survive.