pearse street developments

[Paul Clerkin]

Obarac Limited, whose directors are Desmond and Liam O'Dwyer of Capital Bars, has sought permission from Dublin City Council to expand the Trinity Capital Hotel on Pearse Street by extending into the four Georgian buildings adjoining, which they acquired earlier this year.

The proposal is to build a total of 86 bedrooms in eight-bedroom suits to the rear of 23-27 Pearse Street and an eight-storey hotel block to the rear of the site with 78 bedrooms and a gym on the seventh floor. The block would have a lobby, restaurant and a glazed walkway to the adjoining hotel. Part of the proposal is for the construction of a new courtyard and exhibition hall at ground floor level to the rear of 27 Pearse Street for use by the Pearse Museum.

[PVC King]

I saw the plans today, tis a hard one to call, in so much as they will have a very adverse effect on the four Houses including the Pearse House, but the height is not excessive from the Townsend St side.

The architectural quality looked poor and I have never heard of an 8 story 86 bedroom hotel comprising Suites, each suite is chalked in for 8 bed rooms lumps.

Also 10*8 =80
11*8 =88

Is there going to be a discount for renting 0.75 of a suite?

[jimg]

There seems to be an informal archiseek tradition of reusing/resurecting old threads, so I thought I'd try it here.

I found this old photograph of Pearse St. while dicking about on the web:

It took quite a while for me to find my bearings with the photo as the corner building mirrors Doyles Pub across the street which I found very disorienting. The giveaway is the firestation tower in the background behind the wierd christmas tree thing or whatever it is.

Nothing particularly remarkable about it really but what stands out for me are the Townsend St. buildings in the background. I've always fondly imagined having the power to knock the Screen cinema and the disgusting An Post building beside it and reinstated the street scape. In particular, if you were imaginative with a replacement corner building (on the Screeen cinema "plaza"), you could terminate the vista from Fleet St with the front of a building instead of having it point into the side of An Post building.

[GrahamH]

Who hasn't?

Yes a good image showing the old stock of Townsend St and the lovely Wide Streets Commission 'feature' building there on the apex - as you say mirroring Doyles:




This is such an interesting area of the city, which would be even better had the original Theatre Royal survived.
Even so, Pearse St Garda Station is such a striking unique building in the centre here that frankly anything at all would work well with it on the Screen site; even the Screen does in a way cause it makes it look even better by comparision!

A striking contemporary building in between D'Olier Chambers and the Garda Station would look fantastic I think - fully completing the collection of fine stand-alone buildings surrounding the public space at the junction of these five streets.
Indeed it is this very public space that ought to be next on the agenda for improvement after Screen & Co.

Such a shame the Abbey couldn't have filled the void

[jimg]

Indeed it is this very public space that ought to be next on the agenda for improvement after Screen & Co.

Definitely. It has such potential especially as it is no longer one of the busiest southside traffic junctions. Presumably traffic will be reduced further as DCC continue to remove traffic from the nearby central north/south axis of O'Connell Street and Westmoreland Street. It would make a great complement to College Green even though it lacks the grand grand buildings of it's neighbour. It needs the streetscape of Townsend Street and the corner with Hawkins Street to be reinstated 'though to complete it's perimeter and they need to reclaim as much space as possible from the roads to recreated the feeling of a large civc square. Ideally, the only traffic 'though it would be contained in a couple of Bus lanes.

[GrahamH]

7/4/2006

The conversion into offices of the former premises of the Dublin Oil Gas Company/Academy Cinema is nearing completion now.
The exterior is finished and looks impressive; a fine stone-coloured render, perhaps with a light wash of some kind over it complements the rusty tones of the granite dressings very well:






From Archiseek:
Originally built as an industrial headquarters for Dublin Oil Gas Station, established to extract gas from fish oil. This business went bankrupt in 1834 when the price of fish oil, previously very cheap, suddenly and rapidly increased. In 1842 the site was acquired by the Society of Antient Concerts. Having adapted the interior into an 800-seat hall with a Telford organ, the society gave its first performance there on April 20th 1843, featuring extracts from Handel's Messiah.

By the 1920s, the Antient Concert Rooms had begun to show films, although the premises still also played host to other performances and continued to have an orchestra pit. It was only fifty years ago that the building was completely converted tp a cinema, opening in April 1956 as the Embassy and later becoming the Academy, in which guise it remained until the late 1980s. During the mid-1950s the most serious changes were made to the original facade, when a new canopied entrance was added to the ground floor and a balcony inserted into the hall's auditorium. Otherwise, the exterior remains that recorded in an engraving made soon after the building was first constructed in the 1820s.




The windows are exqusitely restored/replaced to the orginal specifications. There's even the odd pane of crown glass in there:




All of the doors have been painted an elegant, what seems to be almost black green - perhaps an influence from the Royal College of Physcians' recent restoration across the way. The railings have also been mended:



What a transformation from but a few years ago!




However not everything is quite as (cough)...rosy...

[Morlan]

Thanks for those Graham. That oversized blight lurking behind the building is very depressing - saw it from the DART last week. How do the developers get away with building a floor higher than the protected structure?

[a boyle]

Thanks for those Graham. That oversized blight lurking behind the building is very depressing - saw it from the DART last week. How do the developers get away with building a floor higher than the protected structure?

I have passed by it a few times and from the ground the rear building is not visible. That is probably why it was permitted.

Has the interior been finished appropriately , or is it just squared tiles on the ceilings with recessed lights?

[PVC King]

It depends on your vantage point as to whether it is visible or not;

The new build is a little bulky but at least the developers restored the Academy to a very high standard and lets not forget that this building was the setting in a James Joyce short story

[StephenC]

A little bulky? What an understatement. Its a lovely old facade with a mess behind it. No form, no sympathetic redesign of the site just a big bulk of bricks and mortar. A missed opportunity. Very much in keeping with the new Laughter Lounge on Eden Quay.

[PVC King]

You are right it is OTT

how is Hamburg?

[Andrew Duffy]

Was the grafitti from that moron "Grift" erased by the time of the second photo of the new development, or was it taken earlier?

edit: looking more closely, the first photo is obviously during construction.

[logjamb]

good old grift, he lives up to his name. climbing that scaffold and all.

[StephenC]

[HTML]how is Hamburg?[/HTML]

Very interesting. Perhaps i will write a post on it once I get to see more. Some really interesting comparisons with Dublin already.

[MT]

I'm not so sure that the added bulk/height of the building behind the original facade is that much of a problem. As Dublin continues to develop land is going to become more valuable and so companies will seek increased densities and heights. And this can work quite will amongst historic buildings, indeed these sorts of contrasts are to be expected in a living modern city with plenty of existing historic architecture. Melbourne is an example of where Victorian/early 20th cent. buildings have been attractively combined with much larger contemporary offerings.

Alright, the building behind is a lump but this is probably the sort of trade off you'll get for restoration in an increasingly crowded - development wise - city. Especially if more and more high density apartment dwellings are to be built in and around older parts of Dublin. But importantly, the lump behind seems to have no impact from the street.

[MT]

The old and the new in Melbourne.

[damnedarchitect]

What a beautiful building...victorian ?

[Devin]

Nice photos of the Academy, Graham. It does seem to be a first-rate conservation job to the front.

I’m pretty sure there weren’t any sash windows left in it before restoration, so all of the windows must be new. Thus the old glass must also be replica or salvage. I’m a bit uneasy about this practice; the charm of old glass is that it survives by chance – an odd pane here and there, so falsifying its haphazard survival is a bit dubious.

Regarding the rear extension, while I would be the first to decry the greedy, artless shoving of an oversized new building up next to an older one (and there’s a fair bit of it happening these days), I think the result in this case is not too bad. The reason being that there is already a larger structure (the concert room/cinema) attached onto the rear of the classical, front portion of the building. It does look quite crude and bulky alright in that view from the Dart, but the impact from the street is not too bad.

[GrahamH]

I'd largely agree - the posting of the Loop Line image was a bit devious . Trinity's new building is also about to conceal most of it from here anyway (even if they'll just get that hideous view instead from what is to be a flagship institution).
However that is not to excuse the lumpen nature of the setbacks, nor the ridiculous heritage roof plonked on top, crowned with air con units. A more refined job even using the same scale of the structure built would have made all the difference.

Just looking at Paul's 1990s image, there's definitely something strange going on with the original fabric of the building - a lot of materials must have been salvaged as Devin suggests:



There isn't a sash left in the building, nor are there any railings or granite plinths and steps. Yet it's clearly old glass in a great many window panes today, as it is definitely old granite forming most of the railing features! (though the curved sections flanking the steps seem to be new). Indeed even the railings have an historic quality to them. Very strange...


Also on Pearse Street, as mentioned above the extension of the Trinity Capital Hotel is now getting underway. The adjoining early Victorian houses are nearly finished externally, the upper floors and roofs anyway, and to a very high standard. Beautiful pointing especially. Haven't had a chance to check out the real extension to the rear yet, though you can see it peeking over the parapet there...

[a boyle]

those redbricks look lovely , but have the interiors been kept or gutted ?

on south anne street a whole row of shops have been gutted. With respect to that development , i don't know what the state of the interiors was, so i can't say that on the whole it wasn't justified.

But on pearse street i would hope that the hotel was going to use the original interiors as 'deluxe' rooms or some such. Does anyone no for definite ?

[Paul Clerkin]

The lower level of the academy is a reconstruction with good salvaged materials as when I worked in the area it was fairly obvious that someone had driven a coach and four through the facade to provide plate glass windows.

[a boyle]

That's great ! but what about the extension to the trinity plaza hotel ? Was it a keep the facade and gut the rest job ?

[phil]

That's great ! but what about the extension to the trinity plaza hotel ? Was it a keep the facade and gut the rest job ?

I don't think it is. I reckon by the looks of it they are being restored and integrated into the hotel. When the South Anne Street development was being prepared you could see the whole site empty behind the remaining facades (apart from the corner building, which was retained in its entirety). I don't recall seeing these Pearse Street buildings being completely gutted at any stage.

The application numbers seem to be 3635/04 and 6060/04

I tried to link the second one of these here, but it was too long and wouldn't work. It shoudl work if you put the above numbers into the planning search:

http://www.dublincity.ie/business_services/planning/planning_search/index.asp

[a boyle]

it all look fine on the planning application. The returns have all been demolished (it doesn't say how old or new they were) and the internal layout includes 'minor' changes. I would assume (hope) this mean breaking a door through here and there , but basically keeping the interior whole .

Perhaps there is someone who works nearby and has a better idea. They do look wonderfull from the outside though, so hopefully the interior is nice also.

[a boyle]

in fact they look sublime.The brickwork is just lovely.