Belfast Titanic City 1912

Belfast city centre c. 1912.

This photograph of Castle Junction, with a view down Royal Avenue, was taken around 1912. 

It shows a busy, wealthy city centre with many tall, elegant buildings.  It also reveals Belfast’s electric tramway system which connected the city’s commercial heart to its expanding suburbs. 

Belfast’s population had grown to around 390,000 by this time, and many of Belfast’s citizens worked in its world-famous linen, engineering and shipbuilding industries.