Queen’s Arcade

Before thirty finely fitted shops rose under a glazed iron roof in 1880, the site at 13 Donegall Place belonged to Dr. James McDonnell, a man taught to play the Irish harp by the blind harper Arthur O’Neill. In 1797, he co-founded a fever hospital with just six beds where typhus patients could be quarantined rather than left to die (and spread infection) in their own homes, a facility that later became the Royal Victoria Hospital.

In 1792, McDonnell organized a national harp festival in Belfast, and sixteen years later co-founded the Irish Harp Society with a resident academy for blind students, with O’Neill as principal instructor. In 1828, 130 members of Belfast’s nobility presented him with a ten-piece silver service as a tribute of their respect.

After McDonnell’s death, the property changed hands and was transformed into the arcade. A miniature turreted castle sits atop the building, possibly nodding to the original Belfast Castle that once stood across the street- though the real monument to McDonnell’s legacy stands a few blocks away, where the Royal Victoria still saves lives.