Telephone House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Symmetrical detached multi-bay six-storey with attic-storey brick, concrete and granite telephone exchange building, built c.1935. Planned around a central courtyard, facing east and located on the corner of May Street and Cromac Street. Rear elevation abutted by seven-storey block added c.1970.

Set back attic-storey with sheeted steel roof behind grey brick parapete wall with steel railing. Grey brick walling laid in Flemish bond with pre-cast concrete vertical and horizontal bands and granite ashlar ground floor. Square-headed window openings arranged in vertical compositions from first to fourth floors with replacement powder-coated steel windows.

Symmetrical front east elevation is ten windows wide with grey brick parapet wall having projecting brick string course and series of alternating segmental-headed and diminutive square-headed window openings below. Recessed windows from first to fourth floors arranged in a vertical composition with stepped pre-cast lintels to the fourth floor and pre-cast concrete panels below each window having an electrical design. Windows arranged into three pairs divided by pre-cast concrete pilasters and flanked by a further vertical series of slender windows. Ground has granite ashlar walling with a central doorcase and symmetrical composition of five blind windows to either side having splayed sills to a granite plinth course. Square-headed door opening with hardwood double-leaf panelled doors set within plain granite ashlar surround with raised lettering; 'TELEPHONE HOUSE' and recessed granite surround having carved royal coat of arms to a flat voussoired granite arch.

South side elevation is twelve windows wide, detailed as per front elevation.

Rear elevation abutted by seven-storey block, built c.1970, set back from May Street exposing a single bay to the rear elevation.

North side elevation is twelve windows wide, detailed as per front elevation and fronting onto May Street.

The same detailing is carried through to the internal courtyard where many of the original steel casement windows are retained.

Setting;
Occupying a corner site at the junction of May Street and Cromac Street with a later entrance bay to the rear elevation and a large car park to the south fronting onto Hamilton Street.

Roof Sheeted steel
RWG Not visible
Walling Grey brick / pre-cast concrete / granite ashlar
Windows Replacement metal / original steel casement

Historical information

Telephone House was built in 1932-5, to designs by TFO Rippingham, as Northern Ireland’s first automatic telephone exchange. (Irish Times)

The first telephone exchanges in Belfast and Dublin were established in 1879, the year after Edison had filed a patent for his carbon telephone transmitter in the United States. The Irish Times reported that in Belfast, ‘the novelty is being taken up with considerable enthusiasm by the merchants and others for whose benefit it is designed’. (Irish Times) In 1884, following negotiations between the telephone companies of England and Ireland and the government, the restriction on their operation to a four mile radius was lifted and a rapid extension of the telephone system took place. (Irish Times)

In 1892 a trunk line was opened between Dublin and Belfast and the two private companies involved, the Telephone Company of Ireland (Dublin) and the National Telephone Company of Belfast co-operated to set a rate of 6d for calls between each city and Dundalk and 12d for towns beyond Dundalk. At the time there was a ‘flourishing exchange’ in Belfast with some six hundred subscribers, but there was as yet, no telephonic communication with Britain. In 1895 the lines between Dublin, Belfast, London, Glasgow and Edinburgh were inaugurated under the terms of the Telegraph Act 1892, Ireland being connected to the system in Britain by means of a submarine wire between Portpatrick and Donaghadee. By this time trunk lines were under government ownership and private telephone companies operated only within cities or towns. Following public dissatisfaction with the operations of the National Telephone Company, it was taken over by the Postmaster-General in 1912 and a further period of rapid expansion of the system followed. (Irish Times; britishtelephones.com)

By 1925, the decision had been made in Britain to spend £35m on the further development of the telephone system. Many MPs thought that Great Britain was ‘very backward in the development of the telephone’. A contrast was made between the operator system and the automatic system which was being used so much in America. At this time there were 2.9 phones per 100 of population in the UK, compared with 15 in USA, and Belfast had a particularly outdated system, using the ‘magnetic’ telephone where the subscriber had to turn a handle to connect with the exchange. (Belfast Telegraph)

Nonetheless, the demand in Belfast to be connected to the telephone network could barely be met and it was not uncommon for an ‘intending subscriber’ to have to wait for years. There was much debate in Belfast, however, over whether an automatic system was necessary. Epsom had opened the first automatic exchange in 1912 and by 1925 there were 18 such exchanges in Britain, but there were those in authority who felt that ‘a good operator service as we undoubtedly have in Belfast is not inferior to an automatic one’. (Belfast Telegraph; Telephone exchange papers)

The decision to open an automatic exchange in Belfast to replace the former exchange on Queen Street was taken in the mid-1920s, shortly before the first automatic exchange opened at Ship Street, Dublin. The undertaking was considerable, involving the installation of plant, including underground cables, before a superstructure could be built and the estimated cost was to be £500,000. It was felt that construction should not begin until the completion of the new parliament at Stormont, and in fact work on the exchange building began in November 1932 just after the completion of Stormont, by the same contractors that were responsible for the Stormont building, Stewart and Partners. The contract with Stewart and Partners was valued at £48,474 and steelwork for the structure was fabricated by Harland and Wolff. (www.dia.ie; Irish Times; Telephone exchange papers)

The Irish Builder reported on the desing of the new building in 1929, “To the important public buildings now being erected in Belfast, in addition to the Parliament House, the Law Courts and the Art Gallery, will shortly be added…the new Telephone Exchange…The design is a fine one in the modern manner…it will be a notable addition to the fine series of new public buildings in the Northern Capital. The architect is Mr R Ingleby Smith O.B.E. F.R.I.B.A. Chief Architect of the Ministry of Finance”. (Irish Builder)

Several contemporary sources state the architect to have been Roland Ingleby Smith but the extent of Smith’s involvement is unclear given that he oversaw the work of others and regularly signed drawings that came out of the Ministry. Other contemporary sources give the designer as Thomas Francis O Rippingham, architect with the Ministry of Finance from 1922 until c1956. Rippingham became chief architect of the Works Division in the mid 1940s and was responsible, among other works, for the standard design for RUC barracks throughout Ulster, the first of which was constructed at about the same time that work began on Telephone House. (www.dia.ie)

According to Larmour the walls of the building were originally intended to have been of Mourne granite but the expense was prohibitive and the granite was eventually confined to a band at sixth floor level and at the base. Ruabon bricks of a silver grey tone were used for the rest of the building with bands of Portland stone at the top. Larmour describes the look of the elevations as ‘Art Deco cum classical’ with the deep-set vertical strips of fenestration. A zig-zag pattern on the cast aluminium panels of the elevations is a motif in the art deco style and is also redolent of the building’s function as a receiver and transmitter of telephone signals, conventionally expressed as zig-zag lines.

The royal coat of arms above the door is carved by Morris Harding, an English sculptor who was also commissioned to carve symbolic devices on the columns and corbels of St Anne’s Cathedral. (www.dia.ie) According to Larmour the building was originally laid out as an L-shape and was later extended in the same style in 1959 to form a square block ‘with a pitched roof of handmade Spanish tiles over a new seventh storey added around the whole block…A series of plain neo-Georgian satellite exchanges was built at various points in the city, also under the direction of R Ingleby Smith. Examples are to be found at Paulett Avenue and Windsor Park’. (Larmour)

The building was officially opened on 25th November 1935 in the presence of the Postmaster General and the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Viscount Craigavon, who called the building a permanent memorial to the Post Office as the developer of the telephone network, praising, “the remarkably high standard of industrial art…in the beauty of line of the modern telephone and in the imposing exterior of Telephone House both of which illustrate how effectively functional perfection can be combined with artistic design.” (Telephone exchange papers)

The building enters valuation records in 1935 as a ‘Telephone Exchange etc’ the property of HM Postmaster General and valued at £750. The building is first shown on the seventh edition OS map of 1938.

A modern extension was added to the building c1976-7 and it was damaged by a bomb blast in 1989. (Patton)

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/1/61/7 – Seventh Edition OS Map 1938
2. PRONI VAL/12/B/43/P/1-8 – Annual Revisions (1897-1930)
3. PRONI COM/21/30 – Extension of telephone system 1924-5
4. PRONI COM/21/43 – Telephone system 1926-31
5. PRONI FIN/46/31 – Contract for erection of superstructure 1932
6. PRONI CAB/9/F/150 – Telephone exchange 1935
7. PRONI COM/21/29 – Telephone system 1922-5
8. Irish Times 15th September 1879
9. Irish Times 9th December 1884
10. Irish Times 28th April 1890
11. Irish Times 22nd July 1891
12. Irish Times 30th July 1891
13. Irish Times 6th April 1892
14. Irish Times 27thMay 1893
15. Irish Times 13th June 1895
16. Irish Times 29th December 1898
17. Irish Times 2nd December 1901
18. Irish Times 28th December 1911
19. Irish Times 4th November 1924
20. Irish Times 3rd May 1928
21. Irish Times 25th February 1931
22. Irish Times 3rd November 1932
23. Irish Times 30th December 1933
24. Irish Builder, Vol 71, 25th May 1929
25. Belfast Newsletter, 10th June 1872
26. Belfast Newsletter, 17th May 1873
27. Belfast Telegraph 28thJuly 1925
28. Irish Times 10th December 1927

Secondary Sources
1. Larmour, P “Belfast, An Illustrated Architectural Guide” Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1987
2. Patton, M “Central Belfast: An Historical Gazetteer” Belfast: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 1993
3. www.britishtelephones.com
4. www.dia.ie

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
V. Authorship
R. Age
S. Authenticity
T. Historic Importance
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

Symmetrical detached multi-bay six-storey with attic-storey brick, concrete and granite telephone exchange building, built c.1935 to the designs of TFO Rippingham. Planned around a central courtyard, facing east and located on the corner of May Street and Cromac Street the rear elevation is abutted by seven-storey block added c.1970. Although the interior has been substantiall changed, the scale and Art Deco style of this building is unique in Northern Ireland. As the first automatic telephone exchange in N Ireland, it represents a significant landmark in the development of the local telephone system.