Victoria Street, Belfast

Victoria Street, Belfast c.1912

This photograph of Victoria Street in 1912 reveals much about the growing prosperity and modernity of Belfast at the start of the twentieth century.  The building  to the right in the foreground is the old town hall.  Its original function was replaced by the magnificent Belfast City Hall, opened in 1906 at a cost of £360,000. 

Note too the electric tramway which replaced the earlier horse-drawn trams.  Powered by overhead wires, tramways represented the height of technological innovation and provided a link between the city’s suburbs and its centre.  Even the elegant Edwardian lady, setting off on her bicycle, suggests that Belfast was a confident city with a clear sense of its direction.

Stephen Gwynne was a famous Irish journalist, politician, author and commentator of the time.  In 1915, in his book ‘The Famous Cities of Ireland’, he wrote this of Belfast:
“…she is enormously occupied by her present, enormously and justly proud of what her citizens are and what they have accomplished”.