shop/retail outlet

Attached four-storey gable-fronted commercial building, built c. 1913 as one of three identical buildings in row of four similar gabled buildings (Nos. 18-21). Three-bay first floor, two-bay second and third floors, dormer attic with single window, and concealed basement. Now in use as restaurant with offices over, and having recent shopfront to ground floor. Pitched natural slate roof, running perpendicular to street, with terracotta ridge tiles, red brick chimneystacks to east and west party walls, and masonry coping to gable over dentillated brick cornice on fluted stone consoles and topped with carved urn to west end. Recessed replacement uPVC downpipes to outer sides. Machine-made red brick walling, laid in Flemish bond, with moulded brick sill courses to first and dormer floors. Segmental-headed window openings to second floor with cavetto brick reveals, and square-headed to third floor with bull's-nosed surrounds, all with moulded limestone sills and raised block-and-start brick architraves with hood-cornices, latter keyed to third floor. Tripartite opening to first floor with lugged and shouldered surrounds, stepped-plan limestone piers to middle, and with terracotta rosette motifs over. Opening to attic has plain brick reveals, lugged and shouldered architrave rising to red sandstone festoons, egg-and-dart moulding and dentillated brick cornice, with geometric terracotta panels to apex. One-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows to lower floors with ogee horns, and three-light timber casement to attic. Basement has cast-iron pavement light at street level.

Early twentieth-century commercial building, built as a pair with No. 19, suggested as likely to be a design by O’Callaghan & Webb. (Casey,2005) Despite the insertion of a replacement shopfront to ground floor, the building is well maintained on the upper floors, exhibiting good period detailing devices in red brick, terracotta and carved stone. Forming part of a fairly cohesive row, this building, and the rest of the group, contributes to the fabric of early twentieth-century commercial buildings which define much of the streetscape character of Suffolk Street.