1872 – Dunlop Oriel House, Fenian Street, Dublin

This building occupies a prominent site turning the corner from Westland Row into Fenian Street. It’s an elaborate but curiously ungainly facade with brick detailing, breakfront bays, gablets breaking the roofline and variety of window openings. This decorative brickwork, granite and terracotta detailing are typical features of its time.

It was the headquarters of Dunlop Rubber, and the address at which the original pneumatic tyre patent was drafted in 1893 ‘for the wheels of Velocipedes and other Vehicles’. The house served as headquarters for the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company, for which it was known as the Dunlop Oriel House.

It later gained a certain notoriety during the Civil War when it served as the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department of the recently established Irish police force.

As Eunan O’Halpin described it “Oriel House succeeded in its task of suppressing small scale republican activities in the Dublin area, not by the sophistication and efficiency its intelligence work… but by the more direct method of striking terror into its opponents”.
Defending Ireland: the Irish state and its enemies since 1922, 2000

Formed in 1921, the CID was responsible for the arrest of over 500 Anti-Treaty IRA fighters as well as the seizure of much weaponry and documentation. It had files on over 2,500 republican suspects. The CID was considered unsuitable for the police force in peacetime and was disbanded in October 1923 and 30 of its members were transferred to the Dublin Metropolitan Police as detectives, and later into the Garda Special Branch. Now owned by Trinity College Dublin.