Belfast has a relatively small number of buildings with fine interiors, and one of the best is the Harbour Office at Corporation Square, where the city's shipbuilding industry first developed. Built of stone in a classical Italianate manner as befitted the home of the Harbour Board of the expanding port, George Smith's building was more than doubled in size when WH Lynn extended it only forty years later (with the builder working on a tender of a little over £14,000!).
The main feature of Smith's building is 
the
lantern, which originally dominated the now-hidden west elevation;
nowadays, Lynn's new elevation wraps round the original building
which is hardly seen from its frontage in Corporation Square.
The drawings for the extension are housed at PRONI, but Smith's
drawings remain at the Harbour Office, and an elevation of the
original west elevation
can be seen there, along with an intriguing plan of the timber
foundation piles.
In the original building there is a fine cove-ceilinged
room known as the Morland Room;
its equivalent in Lynn's extension
is a double-height banqueting room at the opposite end.
The entrance hall is notable
for its marble pillars
and ornate late Victorian stained glass, and the main staircase
gives a flavour of the extraordinary collection of important paintings
of local history which is housed at the building. This includes
some fascinating pictures of the early harbour itself
, and a number of important
artefacts like the bell of the old Market House.
An interesting large painting at one end of the main room is Thomas Robinson's "Review of the Belfast Yeomanry", which started as a commercial proposition in which he undertook to paint the faces of the Belfast gentry in a scene of the High Street for a guinea apiece. Some hundred and fifty people agreed to this and the project proceeded, but only a few paid up, so Robinson had to market the painting another way. He added a statue of Nelson (hero of the hour) in the middle and painted in the Dublin GPO, then tried to sell it in Dublin, with no more success. Eventually his heirs gave it to the Harbour Office, where it forms an intriquing conversation piece.
The Harbour Office is opened to the public
at regular intervals, and a tour gives an insight into the development
of the port of Belfast, touching on many of the individuals who
helped to develop it, as well as a view of one of Belfast's great
buildings.
The following description of the Harbour Office is drawn from the Society's publication on buildings of Central Belfast:
Fine Italianate building in brown sandstone with channelled
ground floor; central two-storey section recessed between end
pavilions which have attic floors with Diocletian windows and
balustraded parapets; entrance portico of paired Ionic columns
flanked by shell-topped niches; ground floor windows roundheaded,
first floor ones pedimented, some with stone balconies; octagonal
clock tower with arcaded lantern and weathercock; two-storey bow
window with curved glass on W gable. Lynn's extension actually
wraps round two sides of Smith's building, and all but one bay
of the Corporation Square frontage is his, with Smith's slightly
more intricate detailing visible on the river elevation. Very
fine interior, including the cove-ceilinged Morland Room in the
Smith wing, and the barrel-vaulted double-height main reception
room at the end of Lynn's extension. The building houses an excellent
collection of local paintings, particularly in a room known as
the Titanic Room (since it houses a table and chairs that were
made too late and missed the boat). The modern Harbour Office
is a mundane four-storey office block set behind the Smith building.
See Appletree 1992 front endpaper; Bardon p.110; Beckett p.64;
Brett pp.35, 63, pl.33; Hogg 10/21/182-92; IB 1891 p.13; IBT p.39;
Larmour p.55, pl.XIII; McCutcheon pl.135.5; NMC p.90; Owen pp.45-46,
f.p.41, 64-65; PRONI D1898/1; Sayers pp.91-93.
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