molesworth street school

@Pot Noodle wrote:

Anyone got a picture of the building that used to be on Molesworth St where the european parliment is now
i think was a school or something

St. Ann’s School and Molesworth Hall.

There is a particularly good piece about it in Fredrick O’Dwyer’s ‘Lost Dublin’ (1981). This is a copy of his pic of the Deane & Woodword hall, which was a particularly striking Ruskinian polychromatic composition in banded calp, granite and brick, it says here.

As with the Victorian re-fronting of St. Ann’s Church, around the corner on Dawson Street, I have mixed feelings about Molesworth Hall. It was clearly a beautiful piece of architecture, but it, and the adjoining school, did replace a terrace of modest houses that were, in all probability, Dutch Billys that, together with the original design of St. Ann’s Church, must have constituted a grouping that got as close to baroque as Dublin ever achieved.

That was a crime to pull that beautifull school down and replace it with a monster of brick uglyness

Thanks Gunter for the pic

I understand better now why people say that Dawson St used to be a triumph of Victorian architecture. Even with all the losses, it’s still one of the classier streets in the city.

And The Grand Lodge of Ireland is another striking building on the St