1922 – No.1 Lower O’Connell Street, Dublin

On the corner of O’Connell Street and Eden Quay, built in 1922 on the site of Hopkins & Hopkins, watchmakers & jewellers, which was completely destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising. A fine building marking the start of O’Connell Street, it deserves better treatment. Pictures of this building from earlier in the century show many window awnings, it would be nice if this feature could be restored in this and other buildings in the city. Poorly treated in recent years since the demise of the Irish Nationwide Building Society who rented it for many years.

“One of the principal features in Messrs. Hopkins and Hopkins new premises in Lower Sackville Street and Eden Quay is the Irish cut granite from Ballyknocken quarries of which it is built. The work is richly treated, and presents a bold and striking effect in the architecture of this particular angle of a great street. The shop fronts and fixtures are being entrusted to Messrs. Pollard, London, specialists in the line of jewellery shop fittings. The new building has a frontage of some sixty feet, and is five storeys high over basement floor. The floors are in timber and the roofs covered with Graves vulcanite. Messrs. McGloughlin, Great Brunswick Street, erected the steel construction. Messrs. Cummins and sons, Abbey Street, are putting in the electric installation, and Messrs. Blake, North Great George’s Street, are carrying out the heating. A continuous run of modern pattern prism lights are supplied by Messrs. Hayward Bros. Messrs. O Callaghan and Webb are the architects, and bills of quantities for the work were prepared by Mr J. Graves Clayton, FSI. Messrs. Collen Bros., East Wall are the contractors.”
The Irish Builder, February 25, 1922