Leinster Market, off Hawkins Street D@

If you needed an illustration of how DCC doesn’t care, of how traders don’t care, of how the public doesn’t care… Townscape? Just use it as a tip.

I wouldn’t like to speculate as to whose fault this is; knowing as I do who owns that building and having dreaded from the start the aggravation its inevitable poor treatment would cause me.

Its not a public street/lane so its not really DCCs fault. The lane was built as part of the Gas Building complex and refurbished in early 1990s (i think) by the Gas Company. The lane now belongs to Trinity I imagine.

Big problem here…. where does it go to. A lack of usage and destination mean that its can quickly become a spot for anti-social behaviour. Hence the gates.

I agree its a shame though.

StephenC: because it’s private (ownership) doesn’t mean it’s not public (concern). So, it is DCC’s fault. We are entering a ‘new world order’ (I think).

It’d make a nice location for a Christmas Market… At night, with some of those tasteful white lights overhead like the lanes off Grafton St had last year, it’d look like something from Harry Potter.

It’s actually quite a narrow passageway and not much use as anything other than a shortcut. Quite picturesque though.

Dublin’s Bridge of Sighs as in “sigh” oh well, it’s not sooo bad looking at all these bins I suppose.

I doubt you’d find eternal love by kissing under it though. A knee trembler maybe…..

Although architecturally very different, it reminds me a bit of Little Turnstile in London in terms of the narrowness of the laneway

A lot of similarities with Bottcherstrasse in Bremen built in the 1920s and now a tourist trap.

There’s a good b+w Father Brown photograph of Leinster Market, with shops, in a new book called the ‘Annals of Dublin’.

Unfortunately it’s thirty quid, so we may have to wait until they’re giving it away for five after Christmas.

If the hideous heap that is O’Connell Bridge House (which blocks the alley off from dolier street) was knocked, it would make a great passage way linking the two streets, and rid the city of one of its most grotesque and contextually misplaced building’s.

Is there not an access through to D’Olier St that just isn’t open?

Yes- it’s a through route. Sometimes not open, but not blocked (to the best of my knowledge).

@donalbarry7 wrote:

If the hideous heap that is O’Connell Bridge House (which blocks the alley off from dolier street) was knocked, it would make a great passage way linking the two streets, and rid the city of one of its most grotesque and contextually misplaced building’s.

Someone please tell me that there is at least a remote chance someone will do away with O’Connell Bridge House within the next decade. Not even Loopline bridge is as big a stain on the entire impression the city of Dublin gives off as that dreary looking monstrosity.

It might just be me but I feel the spot is craving a high rise. Something sleek and streamline, but damn tall, like a compact London Bridge Tower:

In the end almost anything else will do, even nothing. If I could change one structure in Dublin, it would be that.