Thomas Street & James Street, Dublin!

[gunter]

People really need to go down there and see this.

This latter day Hector Gray has his tat spilling out all over the street and on Saturday he stuck up three new yellow perspex signs on the upper facade.







This guy is capable of destroying Thomas Street single handedly.

I know it's summer time but does anyone work in Dublin City Council?

[StephenC]

Nice

[aj]

Nice

so who is going to lodge a formal compliant with DCC???

[Morlan]

How hard can it be for DCC to employ an inspector to walk around the city every few weeks and issue notices on the spot? It's a losing battle if they are just relying on complaints from the public. Christ almighty.

[StephenC]

so who is going to lodge a formal compliant with DCC???

Hey I did the signage on O'Connell Street! Besides its July...traditional public sector 8 week holiday

[StephenC]

I understand that Planning Enforcement have been notified.

[Morlan]

Are they going to remove that ghastly wooden panel as well?

Also, I assume the DCC just send a letter to the owner. How long do they have to remove the offending signage? And if they don't remove it or "didn't receive the letter", what happens then?

[Smithfield Resi]

You be suprised at just how long it takes to get enforcement action. I just enquired on an unauthorised advertising sign I notified in January and was told that it was still 'under investigation'.

Equally I'm pursuing a blantantly illegal trivison that I reported almost exactly a year ago, it appears to still be spinning and making revenue.

Finding the owner seems to be the "go to" problem with enforcing these things. Surely this could be handled in revenue producing way (X fine per day) rather than the drag on LA resources and the corresponding sluggish response.

[Punchbowl]

Some work being done on the derelict houses right opposite the James St Hospital Entrance (next to the awe inspiring Chandlers Guild block) and specifically the side of the tall Georgian (sorry, no pictures)

Anyone know the story here?

[StephenC]

I think they are stabilisation and part demolition works agreed with DCC. One stays up and one comes down if I remember rightly

[gunter]

It looks like no. 164 is to be sacrificed.




the rear of 164 - 167 photographed in 1995

No. 164 is the last survivor of a series of terraces of 'Transitional' houses that, up to the mid 1990s, still lined most of the north side of James Street, west of the Fountain. If DCC have sanctioned the demolition of this house, that would be disturbing.


A Patrick Healy photograph of 163 - 166 James St in the 1960s


A 1995 photograph of 164 - 167 James St. after dereliction had begun to take hold


A photograph of 164 - 167 James St. after fire had gutted no. 162 a couple of years ago


Nos 162 - 164 James St. today with more of no. 162 lost and with the roof of no. 164 removed in apparent preparation for full demolition

'Transitional' houses form a key part of the 18th century building record in Dublin, they provide the physical evidence that the gabled tradition, with its single massive corner chimney stacks, axial roof structures and closet returns, endured long after the introduction of flat parapets anounced the the re-convergence of architectural taste here with that of the neighbouring island. In a civilized country, that would be a part of the building record that people would ensure was protected.

[Punchbowl]

Well, the work as it appears, is happening on 162, which is probably beyond repair anyway... But the numbers have confused me here so I could be wrong

[gunter]

162 is the fire damaged, former pub, on the right, 163 is the tall, three-bay Georgian, in the middle and 164 is the 'Transitional' house on the left.

I suspect that 162, as you say, is a write off, but 164 should not have been, yet the roof has been removed and the party wall with 163 has been lined with steel cladding so, unless somebody stops them, it looks like 164 is coming down.

[Punchbowl]

Yet they have a timber supported some of the windows on 164, is this purely a safety messure to prevent a total collapse during demolition, or are we getting a 'facade' job, with an extra floor added on (hence the removal of the roof) ?

[thebig C]

God what makes me at once most wistful and angry looking at those old pictures, is not the quality of the architecture (it often isn't great) but the completeness of the streetscape! Even up until the early 1980s many streets were the exact same as they had been built 200 years earlier. How many streets are in this condition as of 2011?

[Punchbowl]

163 featured on 'Animal Clinic' tonight on RTE1, apparently a lost dog found its way inside and had to be rescued. The DSPCA were reluctant to go in as they claimed it was a dangerous building. Then again, it was before the recent stablisation. In other news, 164 has been worked on lately too... Is it simply to stop it falling down and killing someone, or is it part of a long-term plan to restore?

[gunter]

I encountered this 4th year Bolton Street project while minding my own business today in the Academy of Music on Westland Row.



while we were all getting ourselves exercised about saving the uniquely valuable streetscape on the ‘Frawleys’ section of Thomas Street last year [or was that two years ago], a new generation of Bolton Street architecture undergraduates were discovering the enduring appeal of Brutalism.

Apologies for the dodgy photography, the RIAM are saving money on light bulbs.


Paul Maher


Donnchadha Gallagher


Graine Ni Chuanachain


Brian Jordan

One hint of sensitivity was provided by this scheme by Brian Jordan. Seemingly alone among the 16 students featured, Jordan proposed to retain and re-use several of the early 18th century houses on the site and he has confined his 'bush-hammered concrete' creation to just the site occupied by the 1930s Frawley building [OK and three of the five bays of the Joseph Fade mansion/bank].


Brian Jordan


Robert Chapman x2 [ not sure what the x2 stands for here, possibly his cyborg model no.]

That last guy has taken the general eastern-block-palace-of-culture theme and taken it to a darker place. If you run a bar-code scanner across the facade backwards it actually reads ‘F%@k three hundred years of street-architecture, the future belongs to Satan’

[GrahamH]

Heh - and the ultimate irony being that 'the listed redbrick' is not listed, and if one had to make a harsh call of a cull in the group, that would be one of the first to go, not the last.

I spoke at length with two of the students involved in the above, who were actually quite considerate (perhaps one was Mr Jordan), but they kept restating, upon my no doubt grating incredulity at the project brief, that the lecturers were insisting that the site was to be cleared and that maximum scope be taken from the 'contemporary presence on Thomas Street'. In fact, they were genuinely interested in the challenge of accommodating what was there once its significance and interest was explained to them.

As with the UCD GPO Abbey Theatre proposals a year or two ago, the mind boggles at the thinking behind what one can only describe as wasteful and corrupting exercises of this nature. Not only, by definition of the brief, are the buildings crude and non-contextual, they just look plain daft. That's the main point, not really the historic streetscape aspect: one feels embarrassed both for the students trying to satisfy lunatic professors, and for the marooned civic buildings sandwiched in a rambling merchant terrace which would quite clearly like to be somewhere else. Like Coventry.

In other news, the vacant site a few doors up from the former library at No. 25ish currently has a large scaffold being erected by, presumably, The Digital Hub. Looks like they're consolidating the exposed party walls of the flanking houses - a decade after the tooth was extracted.

[StephenC]

Liam Carroll would be so proud... :-)

[Punchbowl]

Just heard St Catherines on Meath St was set on fire today. No proper reports of damage, but any fire is generally a bad thing

http://breakingnews.ie/ireland/man-held ... 34328.html

[StephenC]

Very worrying for such an important city centre church. Here's hoping the damage isn't too severe.

[GrahamH]

A very sad event, and more poignant still in the context of recent discussion about the church over on the Irish Catholic Churches thread.

It was remarkable how suddenly indication of the fire became apparent on the street. I was walking along Thomas Street at the same time, on what a crisp clear evening. Ten minutes later, emerging from a shop, Thomas Street was totally engulfed in smoke - with the vista of the sister church, S.S. Augustine & John, positively magisterial as the soaring spire disappeared into the smog. As the wind was blowing from the south-west, the smoke literally pumped out in waves onto Thomas Street like a dirty great dry ice machine from the conduits of Vicar Street and the nearby alleyway of an apartment building. Extraordinary to see.

The locals were rushing about and reversing cars etc, while ever-helpful tourists were ringing the fire brigade (you could hear the sirens in the distance at that point). Poor St. Catherine's itself had smoke oozing out of every orifice in the building's upper structure, indicating just how much heat loss there is in a building of that kind (or good ventilation, if viewed that way). It was evident the entire volume of the interior was engulfed in smoke, as it was pouring out from the very front to the very back, from under the eaves and guttering, from under the slates, from under the leadwork, plumes rising behind the tower, and all joints in the roof such as the abutment of the lower pitch of the chancel with the nave wall. The wisps of smoke emerging from under slates dancing along in horizontal lines along the roof structure was particularly dramatic.

The fire brigade evidently got there very quickly, which is heartening, but it took well over an hour to get it under control. I can only imagine the building is very badly smoke and water damaged. Word this evening is that it was a deliberate arson attack in the crib area, and the individual in question is undergoing psychiatric assessment.

[Smithfield Resi]

Any enforcement yet on our Door n Floors chap? Posting from across 'the pond' so cannot nip down there...

[StephenC]

What's enforcement mean Daddy?

[gunter]

what's enforcement mean daddy?

enforcement is when yo mean daddy council man
clean up the hood and take yo bad ass unauthorized sign
and shove it up yo gangsta mans junk store