14 Lower Crescent and 2-5 Crescent Gardens, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT7 1NS

14 Lower Crescent and 2–5 Crescent Gardens is a typical, relatively plain red brick late Victorian terrace of 1898, situated on the northern edge of the university area in Belfast, set on a slight north-to-south rise between Lower Crescent to the north and Upper Crescent to the south. It sits within a conservation area.

The terrace was built on what were formerly garden plots belonging to the householders of Upper and Lower Crescent. Originally it consisted of six properties, all private dwellings. The larger property at the northern end — number 14, then known as 'Irene' — housed two apartments in 1899, occupied by a Reverend C. Seaver and a John T. McConnell. By 1920, number 14 had become a nursing home, remaining as such until the 1960s, when it became a Health and Social Services Board office. The remaining properties continued as dwelling houses well into the 1970s, but by the later 1980s had all been converted to offices. The southernmost property, number 6, was demolished around 1983 and replaced with a larger modern brick office block whose stylised bays and dormers echo the character of its neighbours. All properties are now in office use.

The terrace is two and a half storeys in height. Four of the remaining properties are double-fronted and virtually identical to one another, differing only in the choice of window frames. To the centre of the ground floor of each is the main entrance, with a panelled timber door and rectangular fanlight. A narrow decorative moulded stringcourse runs above each entrance, following the line of the doorway lintel. The lintels are in sandstone, though most are now painted. To either side of the entrance is a single-storey canted bay with a shallow hipped roof — finished in a variety of coverings across the terrace — each bay having a window to each face, glazed with either a plain sash or a more recent PVC frame made to resemble a sash. The bays have projecting brick eaves courses and bevelled brick or rendered bases, with sandstone lintels as elsewhere. At first-floor level, five windows are arranged as two pairs flanking a single central window, again with sandstone lintels and a stringcourse above matching that at entrance level. At the uppermost level are two gabled half-dormers with overhanging eaves, shaped bargeboards and finials, each containing a window of the same type as those below but shorter in height. Just below half-dormer level runs a gutter course. The gabled roofs are slated, and a row of large shared red brick chimneypots runs along the terrace. Some properties have Velux windows and flat-roofed dormers to the rear.

To the rear, each of the four double-fronted properties appears originally to have had a two-storey lean-to projection, though most of these have been substantially extended. The rear of number 4 has been altered most significantly, with the original projection replaced entirely by a large two-storey flat-roofed addition that covers the whole of the formerly open yard.

The corner property at the northern end — number 14 — is somewhat larger than the rest and differs from its neighbours in several respects. Its entrance is in the gable rather than the main elevation, positioned to the left of centre on the ground floor of the north-facing gable, and is sheltered by a pitched roof hood carried on curved timber brackets. Immediately to the left of the entrance is a canted bay matching those of the rest of the terrace, and to the left of that bay is the north face of a large, mainly two-storey gabled return, which is flush with the gable. This return face has two tall sash windows at ground-floor level and two smaller sash windows at first-floor level. The gable itself has three unevenly spaced windows at first-floor level, the one to the far right being considerably taller than the other two; this taller window differs from the rest of the gable windows in not being a sash. At the uppermost floor there is a single, moderately sized window. The north elevation of number 14, facing the street, follows the same arrangement as the double-fronted houses but without the central entrance and with four rather than five windows at first-floor level.

The broader setting of the terrace is rich in historical context. The development of this part of south Belfast was set in motion by the selling off of much of Lord Donegall's Belfast estate in the early to mid 19th century, which opened large areas of land around the town for development. The lands along the Malone Ridge were particularly attractive to developers, leading to the construction of many fine late Georgian-style terraces from the mid 1830s onwards, a trend accelerated by the establishment of Queen's College in the area in the later 1840s. These grand new terraces were occupied by Belfast's professional and business classes, who left their older residences in the town centre, which were in turn gradually converted into shops and offices.

Upper Crescent, perhaps the grandest of these terrace developments, is an elegantly curving row of three-storey dwellings in a late Regency style, built in 1846 by timber and shipping merchant Robert Corry. Its authorship is uncertain, though Dr Paul Larmour has suggested that Charles Lanyon may have had a hand in the design. Corry himself undertook the building work and took up residence in the house at the east end; for the first few years the row was known as 'Corry's Crescent'. To the immediate south of the crescent, where a church and small park now stand, Corry maintained a large lawn as a garden. Shortly after it was laid out, however, he had it ploughed up and used for the cultivation of vegetables to relieve local workers suffering as a result of the Great Famine. To the north of the garden ran an old watercourse flowing northwards into the 'Basin', a reservoir east of the Dublin Road; to the east lay smaller gardens belonging to other occupants of the crescent; and to the east and north-east ran Albion Lane, a narrow semi-rural laneway stretching from the north end of Bradbury Place to the east end of the present University Terrace.

In 1852 Corry built a second terrace, Lower Crescent, to the north of his garden and just south of the old watercourse, much in the same style as Upper Crescent and occupied by a similar mix of professionals and businessmen, though by as early as 1860 the ground floors of some properties were already in use as offices. In the later 1860s a railway line was cut immediately to the north of Lower Crescent along the line of the old watercourse. In 1873 the large sandstone building originally known as Ladies Collegiate and later as Victoria College was added to the west end of the terrace, and by the end of that decade two further houses had been added to the east end, the more easterly of which — 'Rivoli House', designed by William Hastings — originally contained a dance academy run by a Frederick Brouneau. The new railway line cut across Albion Lane and preceded the laying out of the broader Botanic Avenue.

Upper Crescent also saw further building in the 1860s and 1870s, with two large properties designed by William Hastings erected at the west end in 1869, one of which — 'Crescent House', now the Bank of Ireland — also fronted onto University Road. In 1878–79 two further houses were added between those of 1869. Between 1885 and 1887 the large Presbyterian church, now the Crescent Church, was erected to designs by Glasgow architect John Bennie Wilson on the west side of Corry's former garden, and in 1898 the present terrace of Crescent Gardens was built on the site of the smaller garden plots to the east end — the terrace that is the subject of this record.

During the first half of the 20th century most properties in Upper and Lower Crescent and Crescent Gardens remained private dwellings, but by 1960 many had been given over to business use or divided into flats, with the former Rivoli House — by then renamed 'Dreenagh House' — becoming the Regency Hotel. By the early 21st century none retained residential use. In the mid 1990s three of the 1860s–70s houses at the west end of Upper Crescent were demolished and replaced by a modern office block, and in 2000 the railway cutting to the south of Lower Crescent was built over in preparation for further development.