History
The site now occupied by Belfast City Hall was once the home of the
Plans for the City Hall began in 1888 when Belfast was awarded city status by Queen Victoria. This was in recognition of Belfast's rapid expansion and thriving linen, rope-making, shipbuilding and engineering industries. During this period Belfast briefly overtook Dublin as the most populous city on the island of Ireland.
Construction began in 1898 under the supervision of architect Sir Alfred Brumwell Thomas and was completed in 1906 at a cost of £369,000. Belfast Corporation (now the council) used their profits from the gas industry to pay for the construction of Belfast City Hall. Local firms H&J Martin and WH Stephens were among the companies involved in construction. James G. Gamble, architect, was the clerk of works.
The city hall in Durban, South Africa is almost an exact replica of Belfast's City Hall. It was built in 1910 and designed by Stanley G. Hudson, who was inspired by the Belfast design. The Port of Liverpool Building, designed by Arnold Thornley and completed in 1913, is another very close relative.
On August 1, 2006 the city hall celebrated its centenary with a "Century Of Memories" exhibition and family picnic day.
On 3 December 2012 a motion was passed by the majority-Irish nationalist Belfast City Council stating the Union flag – which had flown over City Hall since 1906 – was only to be flown on designated days. The nationalist parties on the council, the SDLP and Sinn Fein, had originally proposed the flag to be removed and never be flown again, but an amendment by the Alliance party to have the flag erected on designated received sufficent votes to be passed. All unionist representatives on the council voted against the motion. The flag was removed the next day. Upon hearing the news, a group of loyalists who had been holding a protest outside during the vote attacked police and attempted to storm the building.
Read more about this topic: Belfast City Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)