1906 – Iveagh Trust Public Baths, Bride Road, Dublin

Part of the Iveagh Trust scheme which included housing, education, and social elements – the most significant urban renewal scheme undertaken in Dublin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Designed by Joseph & Smithem who designed most of the scheme, assisted by Kaye-Parry & Ross of Dublin. A fine example of early Art Nouveau, the baths are brick set on a granite plinth, decorated with recessed terracotta panels. Until its conversion in the 1990s, this contained a fully intact interior entered through a doorway surmounted by a copper clad dome. The interior has now been much altered, but the exterior survives to be enjoyed.

The building has a tripartite plan, the centre block containing the pool house, the west end containing the boiler house and the east end containing the entrance block with a decorative domed cupola. The interior contained a galleried bath house with and a large 65 x 30 foot swimming pool with a shallow and deep end.

Natural light flooded the bathhouse; directly above the pool was “a splendid glass roof” as well as “a range of side windows” that also aided in ventilating the buildings. Above and surrounding the swimming pool was a “fine ornamental galley” for spectators. It also contained private hot and cold wash baths, eighteen for men and nine for women, which were “arranged on opposite sides of the buildings” enforcing the segregation of the sexes. There were also forty-seven changing rooms. Interior walls were covered with white enamelled tiles. At the south end of the bath complex were shower baths, footbaths and lavatories. This end also housed the washhouse which was equipped with “washing, and wringing machines, together with a drying closet of a new design for the sole use of the baths”.

The Irish Times wrote that “every detail in connection with the baths had been carried out in a most elaborate and sumptuous manner, and no expense has been spared in making them one of the finest public institutions in the city.”

The Iveagh Baths opened their doors to the public on 6 June 1906. They were sold to Dublin Corporation in 1951. Closed in 1985 and left to rot for years. RTE reported in 1990 that “It is estimated that the restoration work would cost a million pounds. Noel Carroll of Dublin Corporation believes that the restoration and development of the baths would be better managed by a private developer. He says that the baths have outlived their usefulness and it was costing the Corporation a small fortune to keep them operational“. Eventually redeveloped as a public gymnasium.