Today, that era is all but over. Many of these factories have shut. The two huge yellow cranes of Harland and Wolff — nicknamed Samson and Goliath — still tower over the city’s harbor, but the company no longer makes ships. Bombardier is one of the last vestiges of the city’s storied industrial past. Ever since Bombardier absorbed the Shorts brand in a 1989 merger, many residents have considered the company to be the natural successor to the Shorts legacy.

“People still call it Shorts,” said Aidan Campbell, a historian and author of 14 books about East Belfast. “Everyone knows someone who works for them.”

That is partly why some are so fearful about what might happen should Bombardier leave Belfast.

Challenges to Northern Ireland’s peace deal, signed in 1998 and known as the Good Friday agreement, have increased in the last year. Brexit may force the reintroduction of formal border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the removal of which was central to the agreement.

Since Britain’s Conservative government lost its overall majority in a general election in June, Prime Minister Theresa May has had to rely on informal support from Northern Ireland’s biggest unionist party to remain in power — leading to questions about the government’s ability to remain neutral in the Good Friday process.

The loss of one of the province’s biggest private employers would constitute a third challenge to the agreement, the success of which has always been partly reliant on a strengthening of the local economy.

“A lot of politicians think that the Good Friday agreement is done and dusted and that’s it, but it’s under threat the whole time from unemployment,” said Jimmy Kelly, the regional secretary for Unite, the trade union that represents Bombardier workers. “You need jobs to keep young people away from dissidents and paramilitaries.”

In parts of the London news media, some have expressed fears that a tanking Northern Irish economy might even galvanize support in Belfast for a united Ireland, especially when contrasted with the improved economic situation south of the border.