Commercial Buildings were built in 1819/20 a commercial hotel, spacious and handsome news-room and ‘piazza for the use of merchants’.[1]
The building was used to house the printing press of the Northern Whig newspapers until since 1922.[2]
The building was designed by John McCutcheon and the architectural critic C.E.B. Brett believed it a ‘splendid formal building of granite, well proportioned…[and] well executed’. [3][4]
It is a typical Georgian building of the neo-classical style featuring symmetry, flat roof, ionic pilasters façade, quoins and rustication.
The building was the only premises in Bridge Street to survive the 1941 Blitz.
Do you want to learn more about the history of Belfast? Let me take you on my Bricks and Buildings Tour that includes this building!
[1] https://www.archiseek.com/2012/1820-commercial-buildings-waring-street-belfast/ Accessed 26.6.22.
[2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Commercial_Buildings,_Belfast_(detail)_-_geograph.org.uk_-_412508.jpg Accessed 26.6.22.
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[3] Marcus Patton, Central Belfast, An Historical Gazetteer (Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society), p.328.
[4] C.E.B. Brett, Buildings of Belfast, 1700-1914 Revised Edition (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), p.17/