Art Deco is most evident in the new commercial architecture of the high street, particularly associated with companies such as Burton’s, Woolworths and the Co-op. It adds much to our contemporary built environment and much more needs to be done to ensure the survival of those Art Deco structures that are still standing.

The largest Art Deco building in Belfast’s city centre that four-storey store built for Woolworth’s on High Street in 1930 by F.W. Woolworth & Co. of Liverpool, the giant pilasters with Egyptian decoration are explained by the fact the Burton’s also had premises on this large site between the 1930s and the 1990s, still functions as a major shop (for the Irish chain Dunnes).

This edifice, in many ways, recalls an age as well as types of buildings, types of shops and modes of consumption, which are now almost extinct. Belfast’s Art Deco buildings, as such, are more than vestiges of an age gone by but tangible remnants of culture that is now falling out of living memory. Download article in full.