Enjoyed a visit on Tuesday 7 July to the renovated Ulster Hall. Believe Belfast city ratepayers paid out around £12m for the Ulster Hall facelift, and money well-spent it was too.
Not only in the jobs created but also in the restoration of this magnificent Irish building.
No flag flies from the roof thank God and the first musical symbol in a relief above the hall door is a collage of harp, pipes and fiddle.
The new-look theatre has a little café attached but I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Still, let's hope the Grand Dame Café is a hit for its owner or franchisee. Contrast this: the Ulster Hall stands as a testament to the use of public monies for the arts while opposite it the Invest NI new headquarters, an award-winning building, costing millions of pounds, has no public art at all outside it.
Our main reason for visiting the Ulster Hall was to view the JW Carey watercolours (commissioned at the start of the 20th century when the hall came into ownership of Belfast Corporation) which are, sadly, stuck in a very tight corridor. However, their restoration after a 100-year war with damp was another coup for the city. One of his works is pictured above as is the Invest hq and the revamped Ulster Hall.
I saw Planxty, Lou Reed and Warren Zevon in the Ulster Hall and while a plaque to Rory Gallagher welcomes visitors, I suspect I saw Rory in concert in the Grosvenor Hall (long-since demolished).
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