‘2 Royal Ave’ (web | ig) – the building designed by WJ Barre (Victorian Web) for the Provincial Bank and more recently a Tesco Metro – was turned into a civic and cultural centre by Belfast City Council in 2023 (Belfast Live).

Coincidentally, the building’s rear doors open into Bank Street (formerly Bank Lane) and Bank Square. (It’s not clear whether they were so named because the Farset flowed along Bank Lane, or for the Bank Buildings, constructed in Castle Place in 1785-1787 (WP | Belfast Live); in any case, the streets already had these names well before the construction of the Provincial building in 1867 (Belfast Media)).

Street artist Decoy (ig), with support from DaisyChain (ig), has painted various shutters and electrical boxes. Bank Square is also home to a series of ‘life in the old days’ panels (see A River Runs Through It) and more recent work by Rob Hilken (see The Grid) and DanK (Fast Cars).

Also included (last below) is the art on the shutters of The Sagart in Chapel Lane.

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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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These three cars are from a new piece of street art by DanK (ig) in Bank Square, Belfast city centre, on the wall of Crown Jesus Ministries (Fb) (in the Berry Street Presbyterian building), replacing the ‘Creation’ mural painted in 2012. Dan calls the piece “Hope” (ig) after the church’s ‘Hope Mission Centre’ (ig); this is the same title he gave to the geisha on the Shankill. This piece does not feature any of the kanji street-signage that would place it in Japan (compare with Night Taxi in the Woodvale), though there is some on the pink car, above.

The middle car has the license plate “OUTATIME” which was the plate on the DeLorean in ‘Back To The Future’ (see also: You Built A Time Machine … Out Of A DeLorean?)

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After floating above the traffic in Shaftesbury Square for more than 60 years, the statues on the Ulster Bank building were taken down last year (2023) and packed off to the Ulster Museum (Belfast Live). The blank wall is now home to a giant, multi-eyed, fish by French artist Veks Van Hillik (ig), painted for both HTN24 and the Linen Quarter business development group (web).

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