Cuffe Street Flats

[Tighin]

I see that Niall Montgomery designed some Corporation flats on Cuffe Street in the 1960s. But who designed the older - 1920s? 1930s? - ones in Art Deco style, and when were they built? What's the main difference (apart from style) between the older flats and the newer?

[gunter]

Tighin, I found a photograph of one of the Cuffe Street blocks I think you're talking about published in booklet dated 1933, with the hoarding still up, so I guess they date to 1932/3. This was about the time when Herbert G. Simms took over housing design for the Corpo from Horace T. O'Rourke.

You had to have a middle initial in those days to get on in life.



I think if they were by Simms, who was a proto-modernist, we have heard about it, so they're probably by O'Rourke, who was not a proto-modernist.

[GrahamH]

And all the better for it with those fantastic dark-painted windows! Magnificent stuff. Thankfully those manky DCC plastic sashes and bizzare buckled casements only have another few more years' life in them before they snap, melt, disintegrate, slide out, morph into lollipop pink, or all of the above.

Let's get some decent repro goin' on and retrieve one of our 'lost buildings' for a fraction of the cost and a lot less bickering.

[Paul Clerkin]

Block of flats designed by and erected under supervision of Horace T. O'Rourke when acting as Architect for Housing to Dublin corporation. Extended by H.G. Simms c 1937.

[Tighin]

Thank you very, very much! That's great!

[Paul Clerkin]

Officially they're on Mercer Street, not Cuffe.

[Tighin]

So would those be what was referred to as Mercer Street Flats?

[Paul Clerkin]

Called Mercer House

[Paul Clerkin]

Nice view of Mercer House from the Green prior to the butchering of Cuffe Street