9 Upper Crescent, Belfast, Co Antrim, BT7 1NT

9 Upper Crescent is a relatively large and fine three-storey rendered town house built in 1846, one of a regency-style crescent of ten similar but not identical properties. It has since been converted to offices and flats.

Upper Crescent is set to the east of University Road and faces, across a small public park, Lower Crescent — a similarly styled development of 1852 which, unlike its counterpart, is arranged as a straight terrace rather than a crescent. Number 9 is one of the plainer buildings in the group.

The front elevation is asymmetrical and faces roughly south. To the right on the ground floor is the entrance, consisting of a four-panel timber door with a rectangular fanlight; the upper panels of the door have semicircular heads. The door is framed with a simple architrave. To the left of the doorway are two tall sash windows with Georgian panes (6/6). On the first floor are two larger windows set on a sill course, with sash frames in regency-style horizontally orientated panes (4/8). On the second floor are two much smaller windows with Georgian-paned sash frames (3/6), resting on a more pronounced, cornice-like sill course. The ground floor is finished in rusticated render, with the upper floors in plain render. Above first-floor window height — and below the second-floor sill course — there is a broad plain course with a thin moulded string course running across it. Above the second-floor windows is a further plain course, above which sits a parapet with plain stone coping.

The rear elevation could not be seen in its entirety. To the right-hand, western side is a two-storey gabled return, with three relatively small windows with modern frames to the ground floor of the gable, and two windows with plain sash frames to the first floor. To the right, this return merges with another two-storey projection that has a mono-pitched roof hidden behind a brick parapet; this projection has a large modern garage-type door at ground floor and a plain sash window to the first floor. Both the gable and the south face of this projection are in brick. On the rear façade of the main section of the building, there are windows to the right on the first and second floors with Georgian-paned sash frames (6/6 and 3/6 respectively). Between first- and second-floor level on the left is a tall sash stairwell window with Georgian panes (6/6). The rear façade is in brick, with a small section of the lower half painted. The gabled roof is slated. There is a tall rendered chimney stack with uniform pots to the east. There are two small skylight windows to the rear, and a Velux window to the rear extension. Rainwater goods are cast iron and possibly also PVC.

Historical and architectural context

The development of Upper and Lower Crescent reflects the rapid expansion of south Belfast in the middle of the 19th century. The selling off of much of Lord Donegall's Belfast estate in the early to mid 19th century opened large areas of land around the town for development. The lands to the south, along the Malone Ridge, were particularly attractive and led to the building of many fine late Georgian-style terraces from the mid-1830s onwards, a trend accelerated by the establishment of the prestigious 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 — properties that were gradually converted into shops and offices.

Upper Crescent was perhaps the grandest terrace development undertaken to the south of the town: an elegantly curving row of three-storey dwellings in a late regency style, built in 1846 by timber and shipping merchant Robert Corry. The authorship is uncertain, though Dr Paul Larmour has suggested that the hand of Charles Lanyon may have been involved. Corry himself undertook the building work and took up residence in the house at the east end; for the first few years of its existence the row was known as Corry's Crescent. Immediately to the south of the crescent, where a church and small park now stand, Corry held 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 for the relief of 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 were smaller gardens belonging to other occupants of the crescent, and further 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 another terrace to the north of his garden and just south of the old watercourse. This new development — the erroneously named Lower Crescent — was much in the same style as that to the south and was occupied by a similar mix of professionals and businessmen, though by as early as 1860 the ground floors of some properties were in use as offices. In the later 1860s a railway line was cut immediately to the north of Lower Crescent, following the line of the old watercourse. In 1873 the large sandstone building originally built as Victoria College for girls was added to the west end of the terrace, and two further houses were added to the east end by the close of the decade. The most easterly of these, Rivoli House, was designed by William Hastings and originally contained a dance academy run by a Frederick Brouneau. The new railway line cut across Albion Lane and preceded the laying out of a new and broader thoroughfare, Botanic Avenue.

Upper Crescent also saw further development in the 1860s and 1870s, with two large properties designed by William Hastings erected to 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 on the ground between those of 1869. In 1885–87 the large Presbyterian church, now the Crescent Church, was erected to plans by Glasgow architect John Bennie Wilson on the west side of Robert Corry's former garden. In 1898 a two-storey terrace, the present Crescent Gardens, was built on the site of smaller garden plots at the east end.

During the first half of the 20th century most properties in Upper and Lower Crescent, as well as 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 — later known as Dreenagh House — becoming the Regency Hotel. This trend continued and by the beginning of the 21st century none were occupied as private dwellings. 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. In 2000 the railway cutting to the south of Lower Crescent was built over in preparation for a new development.

In 1849 Number 9 was occupied by a Mrs Grueber. She was followed in the mid-1850s by Professor Charles McDowell of Queen's College, who remained there until at least the early 1880s. The 1899 and 1910 directories list a W. H. Ward of the Ulster Damask and Linen Company as the occupant, followed by a Robert Robinson in 1920 and 1930. By 1951 the property had been converted to offices, occupied first by the Forestry Division of the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture and subsequently by a firm of quantity surveyors.