Newly opened and gleaming with civic pride, the City Hall of Belfast dominates Donegall Square in this hand-tinted Edwardian view published just months after Lord Aberdeen officially opened the building on August 1, 1906 — the caption text on the card's face records the facts with Victorian statistical satisfaction: erected at a cost of over £300,000, central dome 173 feet high, main front extending 300 feet. The Baroque Revival edifice, designed by Alfred Brumwell Thomas in Portland stone, replaced the old White Linen Hall and announced Belfast's status as one of the United Kingdom's great industrial cities at the apex of its linen and shipbuilding prosperity, just six years before the Titanic — built a mile away at Harland & Wolff — would sail to its fate. The back carries the hallmark of Valentine & Sons, Dublin branch, one of the major postcard publishers of the era, with the Irish harp-and-cherub vignette. Card is unused with a clean undivided-style back.