The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society was founded in 1821 to promote the scientific study of animals, plants, fossils, rocks and minerals.
The Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society Museum at No. 7 College Square North, completed in 1831. The portico is an exact copy of the octagon tower of Andronicus in Athens.
The Museum in 1831. The architects were Thomas Duff and Thomas Jackson. The building has three stories. In the lower story were the lecture-room and library. Each of the upper stories is a single room, forty-seven feet in length, and twenty-seven feet wide, which housed the public museum. A laboratory was later attached to the lecture room.
Specimen of an emperor penguin donated to the Belfast Natural History Society by Francis Crozier
Plate from On the Polyphony of the Assyrio-Babylonian Cuneiform Writing Edward Hincks
Belfast Literary Society
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The Belfast Literary Society was founded in 1801, the second oldest learned society in Belfast. Its first meeting was held in the old Exchange and Assembly Rooms on the junction of Bridge, North, Wari
Belfast Natural History Society
…both joined. In 1823, the Society's collection and the small collection begun in 1788 in the rooms of the Belfast Reading Society and that of the Belfast Literary Society were moved to Belfast Academical Institution where James Bryce was centralising Belfast's rapidly expanding natural history holdings. In 1827, the…
The Exchange Rooms in 1841