The Linen Hall Library, Belfast, by Sir Charles Lanyon (1813-1889

The Linen Hall Library

Sir Charles Lanyon

1864

16-18 Donegall Square North Belfast

Photograph and text by Philip V. Allingham 2006.

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An interesting combination of Georgian proportion and Victorian design faces the late Victorian/early Edwardian colossus of City Hall. Designed by Lanyon, Lynn, Lanyon in a splendid yellow-grey brick, the building was originally a mere warehouse for the firm of Moore and Weinberg when completed in 1864. The present name recalls the fact that Donegall Square was once named Linen Hall Street, after the edifice that once occupied the site of the present City Hall. The books presently in the Linen Hall Library were once kept in the White Linen Hall (demolished in 1898) but were transferred to the present location in 1892. On the present façade, the red hand over the doorway proclaims the building's original use, although, as Fred Heatley points out, it should be the right hand and not the left. The origins of the collection are intimately connected with the establishment of the Belfast Reading Society (1788), which became the Society for Promoting Knowledge in 1792

References

Brett, Charles Edward Bainbridge. Buildings of Belfast, 1700-1914.London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967.

Heatley, Fred, and Gillian Boyd. "The Old Assembly Rooms." Belfast: Paintings and Stories from the City. Donaghadee, N. Ireland: Cottage Publicationa, 1998. Rpt. 2004. Pp. 33-34.

Last modified 7 September 2006