A War Memorial for Belfast. 3 



As a working example, suppose we begin by choosing a site 

 for our Institute. It is almost always hard to find a good site 

 for a new building of any importance in a city. In this case, 

 our Institute should be within the central half-mile circle : it 

 should be conspicuous, and it should stand on a main thorough- 

 fare. Preferably, it should be within easy reach of the Public 

 Library. This would point towards a site somewhere near the 

 corner of Royal Avenue and North Street. But, in a good 

 Town Plan, one would not neglect to make the most of the 

 immediate surroundings of a big new building, and of any other 

 important buildings in the neighliourhood : — in this case the 

 Cathedral. I therefore propose starting from the Cathedral 

 entrance in Donegall Street, and driving out a wide Mall (Fig. l) 

 over the site of the present Church Street, through to Royal 

 Avenue. I would make this Mall at least 120 feet wide, with 

 a roadway on either side, and a formal garden in the centre. 

 (Fig. 2, Frontispiece). I would pull down the worst of the 

 slums which still surround the Cathedral, and make room for 

 more schools, for a residence for the clergy, for a parish hall or 

 diocesan rooms, and for wide spaces, gravelled or grassed, in which 

 to plant trees. The corner where this Mall would meet Royal 

 Avenue would afford a first-rate site for the War Memorial 

 Institute. It is a site at present occupied chiefly by public houses 

 and mean little shops. 



There is a question regarding the building of such a War 

 Memorial in Belfast, the answer to which would, of itself, go far 

 to show whether the true spirit of the scheme had been realized. 

 The men who should do the actual work (manual or mental) of 

 designing and building and ornamenting our Institute should be 

 Irish ; they are the fathers and the brothers and the sons of- 

 those in whose honour the place is to be built ; they know, as no 

 strangers could ever know (or care to know), the spirit in which 

 our Ulster lads of all the creeds and parties went forth volun- 

 tarily to the war. And, more than this, their love for their own 

 will inspire their hands to do their best work for the Institute, 



