The White House, 45 Main Street, Portrush, Co. Antrim, BT56 8BN

The White House, 45 Main Street, Portrush

The White House is a terraced, symmetrical Art Deco department store of three storeys, rendered throughout, with a multi-bay frontage remodelled around 1930 from what was originally a mid-19th-century row of four terraced houses. The building is rectangular on plan, faces northeast onto Main Street, and forms part of a continuous terrace of mixed commercial and former residential buildings in the commercial centre of Portrush. It is interconnected with the neighbouring building at No. 43 (the Trocadero) to the east. A former roofline visible on the southwest gable and the strong vertical emphasis in the fenestration suggest the current Art Deco appearance was achieved by extensively remodelling the earlier terrace rather than by new construction.

Architectural Description

The roofline is flat, concealed behind a large rendered parapet wall with a deep coping and a stepped base that frames a fascia bearing the applied lettering "THE WHITE HOUSE." Two pairs of tapered mouldings adorn the parapet fascia on either side. Rendered chimneystacks with clay pots rise from both side elevations. The walling is painted render throughout.

Window openings are square-headed with chamfered surrounds, masonry sills, and replacement 6-over-6 timber sash windows with ogee horns. The symmetrical front elevation is eleven windows wide.

At first-floor level, centrally positioned, is a lean-to timber glazed conservatory supported on the shopfront canopy below. Decorative steel railing — possibly a replacement — runs to either side of this conservatory.

The ground-floor shopfront dates from around 1950 and sits over a polished granite plinth course. It features slender steel-framed display windows. The overhanging canopy has a timber-panelled soffit and a pair of continuous mouldings forming a fascia with the applied lettering "THE WHITE HOUSE PORTRUSH LTD." The central entrance is recessed and fitted with double-leaf hardwood glazed doors and an overlight, with Art Deco brass handles.

The east side elevation is abutted by the adjoining building at No. 43. The west side elevation is abutted by No. 47. The rear elevation is abutted by a three-storey flat-roofed extension built around 1960, which extends back to Mark Street Lane.

Little original detailing survives in the interior. Within the last two decades, the terrazzo-floored arcade that formerly ran across the front elevation has been replaced with a glazed ground-floor shop extension, above which is a glazed, panelled tearoom in a 1930s style.

Historical Background

The building's origins lie in a row of four three-storey terraced houses built between 1849 and 1857, at what were then numbered 99, 100, 101, and 102 Main Street. By the early 1890s these had been renumbered 33, 35, 37, and 39, and they have since been amalgamated into the single address of No. 45.

A 1849 map held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI D2977/36/6/12) shows No. 99 already built, while Nos. 100–102 were still unassigned building ground. Dan Hanna's 1857 isometric perspective of Portrush (PRONI D2977/36/6/13) — prepared on behalf of the Earl of Antrim to show building lots available to let — provides the earliest detailed picture of these properties. It records that No. 33 (then No. 99), measuring 24 feet wide by 121 feet long, shared the same roofline as Nos. 27, 29, and 31 Main Street. Its front elevation had a door opening to the right with two rectangular lights to its left at ground level, and three lights on each of the first and second floors. It had a gently pitched roof, a front garden ten feet deep with a gate, and a rear yard where a building had been erected facing Mark Street.

No. 35 (then No. 100) presented a taller elevation to the street than its immediate neighbours, a characteristic continued by Nos. 37 and 39 (then Nos. 101 and 102). These properties appear to have opened directly onto the pavement with no front gardens. Each had a door opening to the right on the ground floor with two rectangular lights to its left, three lights on both the first and second floors, and garden buildings to the rear backing onto Mark Street. No. 41 (then No. 102) had a smaller footprint but the same elevated eaves line, with a door to the right and one rectangular window to the left at ground level, and two rectangular lights on each upper floor.

The drapery business known as The White House was founded in 1891 by Henry Hamilton, originally from Portglenone, County Antrim. The name was chosen to reflect Hamilton's previous experience in America, taking its reference from the White House in Washington D.C. Hamilton began trading in Irish textiles — particularly home-spun linen and products of the cottage industry in Donegal — and identified a market in North America, which he serviced by mail order. His business attracted local, distant, and royal custom, most notably Queen Victoria in the late 1890s and the Prince of Wales in 1903. Across the road from the current building there was originally a three-storey hotel also called The White House, alongside two further hotels that the Hamiltons subsequently acquired.

By the early 1890s, Henry Hamilton and his wife Margaret Jane were occupying Nos. 33 and 35 (formerly Nos. 99 and 100). Valuation records from 1892 (PRONI VAL/12/B/6/2E) show No. 33 had a rateable value of £20, in keeping with other terraced properties on the street. By 1895 this had risen to £27, reflecting its partial conversion to a shop (PRONI VAL/12/B/6/2E), while No. 35 remained a house with offices and gardens at that time.

Between 1895 and 1906, Margaret Hamilton established workrooms at No. 33 in addition to the existing shop, and the rateable value more than doubled (PRONI VAL/12/B/4/22B). A valuation map covering 1897 to 1916 (PRONI VAL/12/E/46/2/2) shows a shaded area across the fronts of Nos. 35, 37, and 39, indicating a single-storey, partly open colonnade at ground level with two upper floors above. The building at this period retained its original rectangular lights under a pitched roof, and a modillioned cornice at eaves level — details confirmed by a photograph of the period.

The name "The White House" was first formally applied to No. 33 Main Street between 1914 and 1925, when Margaret Jane Hamilton held the lease from the Earl of Antrim (PRONI VAL/12/B/4/22C). Nos. 35, 37, and 39, leased under the same ownership, were by then trading in part as a hotel, shop, workshops, and yard. These too had acquired the White House name by the valuation records of 1925–1930 (PRONI VAL/12/B/4/22D). Between 1936 and 1957, the first and second floors of Nos. 35, 37, and 39 continued to operate as a hotel (PRONI VAL/3C/1/30).

A 1936 official document (PRONI COM/96/42/244) describes part of The White House as a drapers, outfitters, and dressmakers occupying Nos. 33 to 39 Main Street. The store employed 21 operatives — 10 men, 10 women, and 1 female under the age of 18 — along with 3 further employees in administrative, technical, and clerical roles. All work was carried out in-house and included menswear, boyswear, ladieswear, and girlswear, an alteration service, and cloth sold by the yard.

Sometime between 1956 and 1972, the four properties were fused into a single building and renumbered No. 45 (PRONI VAL/4B/1/64). The combined rateable value of £1,160 compared with a previous combined total of £185 for the four separate buildings, strongly suggesting a major development at this time — most probably the creation of the parapet and the flattening of the roofline to produce a more modernist, Art Deco-influenced appearance. The street numbering of commercial properties on Main Street had changed at least three times over the course of the building's history. By this period The White House had become a limited company (PRONI VAL/4B/1/64), with 66% of its trade drawn from the tourist industry and a workforce of both permanent and seasonal staff (PRONI D2950/1).

Setting and Significance

The White House occupies a prominent position in the streetscape of this coastal town. Its distinctive Art Deco parapet facade and larger scale relative to its neighbours make it a local landmark. However, the building has been significantly altered over time, and little original interior detailing survives. It has been assessed as insufficiently intact to be of special architectural or historic interest for the purposes of statutory listing.