The North Street Arcade is a 1930s
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
shopping arcade
A shopping center (American English) or shopping centre (Commonwealth English), also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.
The first known collec ...
in the
Cathedral Quarter of
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...
,
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
. It is the only example of a shopping arcade from this decade in Northern Ireland, and is one of only a handful left in the whole of the
UK. A Grade B1
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
,
it has been derelict since a fire in 2004.
History
The site on which the North Street Arcade was built, situated between North Street and Donegall Street, was originally occupied by a number of small premises, of which the most significant was the Brookfield Linen Company warehouse, built 1869–1881.
[Holgate 2017, p.140] According to architectural writer Marcus Patton (1993), in the mid-19th century, North Street mainly consisted of "small businesses, shoemakers and publicans, grocers and haberdashers, leather and iron merchants." The
linen trade was also prominent in the area, particularly on Donegall Street (which was known as "Linnenhall Street" in the 18th century). The Brookfield Linen Company Ltd were
flax spinners and
power loom linen manufacturers and merchants who operated from their Donegall Street property from 1869. In 1936 the Brookfield Linen Company warehouse was demolished, along with the various less significant properties, to make way for the North Street Arcade. A handful of architectural details remain from the warehouse building.
The North Street Arcade was designed by architectural firm Cowser & Smyth. A Belfast-based architectural partnership between Benjamin Cowser (1897–1981) and Valentine Smyth (active 1930s–60s), Cowser & Smyth was formed in 1935, making this building one of the partnership’s first major contracts.
Construction was carried out by F. B. McKee & Co. between 1936 and 1938,
[Holgate 2017, p.136] in what was at the time a deprived area of the city.
The construction made use of high-end, luxurious materials, and according to Marie McHugh (1990), the arcade was not initially successful due to the high rent of shop units. After the
Belfast Blitz
The Belfast Blitz consisted of four German air raids on strategic targets in the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland, in April and May 1941 during World War II, causing high casualties. The first was on the night of 78 April 1941, a small attack ...
and
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, and the loss of retail spaces elsewhere in the city, the arcade began to fill with shop owners and the building became a commercial success.
[Holgate 2017, p.145] The building was first valued by the government on the Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland (1956–1972), by the end of which, with at least 20 occupied shop units and one café, the total value of the property came to £5,321 10
s.
During
The Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...
, the building sustained damage from at least two bomb attacks
including an
IRA
Ira or IRA may refer to:
*Ira (name), a Hebrew, Sanskrit, Russian or Finnish language personal name
*Ira (surname), a rare Estonian and some other language family name
*Iran, UNDP code IRA
Law
*Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, US, on status of ...
bomb on 13 January 1976 which also killed two civilians and the two bombers. The building subsequently fell into decay.
In May 1990 the building gained Grade B1 listed status.
During the 1990s, in part due to low rent prices for shop units, a number of artists and creative organisations made their home in the arcade. By the early 2000s the building had developed into a creative hub, including a café, record shop, recording studio and the offices of the
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival
The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is an annual festival of music, comedy, theatre, art and literature that takes place in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The festival was established in late 1999 and the first festival took place in May 2000. It has s ...
, among others.
In 2004, the building was owned by William Ewart Properties, who had plans in the area for a new £120-million retail development.
2004 fire
On 17 April 2004, the building was subject to an arson attack using
incendiary devices, which destroyed all of the business units inside. 23 businesses were directly affected by the blaze. No people were injured as a result, however all the animals inside a pet shop were reportedly killed.
According to BBC reports, members of the arts organisation
Factotum
Factotum may refer to:
*A handyman, employed as a servant
* ''Factotum'' (novel), a 1975 novel by Charles Bukowski
* ''Factotum'' (film), a 2005 film adaptation of the novel
* Factotum (arts organisation), an arts organisation based in Belfast
* fa ...
were still present in the building up to an hour before the fire broke out.
The fire destroyed the floor and glass roof, but as of 2014 the basic structure of the units remained intact.
A number of suspects were questioned by police in relation to the incident, but no one has been prosecuted for the attack.
Redevelopment plans
Before the fire, new plans were already under development in the area, and the owners of the North Street Arcade had drawn up a proposal in 2003. These plans were reviewed by the Northern Ireland
Department for Social Development
The Department for Communities (DfC, Irish: ''An Roinn Pobal'', Ulster Scots: ''Depairtment fur Commonities'') is a devolved Northern Ireland government department in the Northern Ireland Executive. The minister with overall responsibility f ...
(DSD) against their Regeneration Policy Statement (RPS) for Belfast city centre, published July 2003 and adopted April 2004, and found not to be meeting the required objectives of the document.
As a result in 2005 the DSD published a masterplan for the area, developed in conjunction with
Drivers Jonas
Drivers Jonas was a longstanding private partnership of chartered surveyors in the United Kingdom. In January 2010, Drivers Jonas LLP merged with Deloitte LLP, combining the firm with Deloitte's property staff, creating a business group called Dri ...
and
Benoy.
This provided guidance for potential developers of the area, and two concept plans: one which retained only the façades of North Street Arcade (Option 1) and another which also retained the original alignment of the building (Option 2).
The subsequent development proposals for the "Royal Exchange", later renamed "North East Quarter" and then "
Tribeca Belfast", produced initially by Ewart Properties and then by new owner Castlebrooke Investments, met with strong opposition from local artists and heritage organisations such as the
Ulster Architectural Heritage Society
Ulster Architectural Heritage Society was founded "to promote appreciation and enjoyment of good architecture of all periods and encourage the conservation, restoration and re-use of Ulster's built heritage to regenerate and sustain our communitie ...
as they included either partial or full demolition of the North Street Arcade, rather than the potential restoration put forward by Option 2 of the masterplan. In February 2017 the organisation "Save the Cathedral Quarter" was formed, aiming to hold the developers to account and to reach a development which paid respect to the established architectural and artistic heritage present in the area.
Architecture
The building has two entrances; one on each adjoining street. On Donegall Street, a 3-storey façade has been built in an Art Deco style from
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
and
reconstructed stone, while on North Street the 4-storey façade
of the existing
Victorian linen warehouse has been retained, in red brick and red
sandstone
Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...
, with the lower floors remodelled to suit the arcade. The pre-existing Brookfield Linen Company building was designed by
William Henry Lynn and was described by Patton (1993) as "an imposing Italianate five-storey seven-bay building with pedimented and rusticated doorcases groined out of the heavily tooled basement plinth, swags over first floor windows, and giant order Corinthian pilasters supporting a heavy cornice and piers between attic windows."
On the North Street elevation of the North Street Arcade, Patton reported a "domed plastic porch over entrance replacing a former balcony and doorcase; but above that a dignified façade with outer bays set forward, terminating in pediments with flanking volutes". As of 2018 these upper features from the Victorian building can still be seen.
The Donegall Street entrance also includes a feature of the original warehouse: a stone relief sculpture, depicting eight linen workers, which is displayed above the entrance.
Internally, the arcade is constructed on a distinctive curving alignment
from Donegall Street, turning a right angle at a domed central
rotunda, before proceeding straight towards North Street. Before the 2004 fire, the decor featured a tiled walkway and a glass roof, and the entrances and shop fronts were fully glazed and decorated with luxurious materials: plinths and pilasters of green marble and black granite, with windows framed by bronze trim.
[Holgate 2017, p.143]
Gallery
Resources
See also
*
Architecture of Belfast
The architecture of Belfast comprises architectural styles ranging from Georgian through to modernist buildings such as the Waterfront Hall and Titanic Belfast. The city's Victorian and Edwardian buildings are notable for their display of a larg ...
*
Queen's Arcade
Notes
References
*
External links
* {{YouTube, Gib_YS76qAg, North Street Arcade, Belfast, a video produced by Digital Key Limited (published 2 Dec 2014)
Grade B1 listed buildings
Buildings and structures in Belfast
Art Deco architecture in Northern Ireland
Buildings and structures completed in 1938
Shopping centres in Northern Ireland