Dublin Street Clutter Question!

@modular man wrote:

How Do
I have been searching Archiseek for a few pics I remember seeing here a year or so ago. They are of Collage Green and show a picture today (with lots of clutter, traffic lights signage etc.) compared with a picture from the same spot a hundred or so years ago. The point being that the old picture without any of the clutter opens up the space far more successfully than todays version which has suffered at the hand of too many cooks. Does anyone know where I can find these pics, my hour long search has drawn a blank.

In the College Green thread, post number 268, there are some pictures of College Green a century ago.

modular man, Devin originally posted the comparison from At Taisce’s Dublinspirations report in 2004 (yikes, it was that long ago).

https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3576

I attempted a more direct comparison on another thread, though goodness knows which one. Here it is again anyway.

Ah! well that proves it; it is the trees that have ruined the city!

Yep, what a mess. They must unquestionably go for the chop.

Here’s College Green and the House of Lords in Charlie’s notorious Charles Haughey’s Ireland made in 1986. Scroll to 0.53 (or just observe the St. Patrick’s presbytery in all its mellowed glory).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTQ71N9_TyM&NR=1

(and anticipating yet another lengthy thread spawning, could this be merged with the College Green thread?)

your movie lead me to this movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3vEOSkk5AM&feature=related

is the font on the black entrance to the Bank of Ireland the same as the bank of England?

@GrahamH wrote:

Yep, what a mess. They must unquestionably go for the chop.

Here’s College Green and the House of Lords in Charlie’s notorious Charles Haughey’s Ireland made in 1986. Scroll to 0.53 (or just observe the St. Patrick’s presbytery in all its mellowed glory).

Thanks for that Graham, God Haughey though a lot of himself :rolleyes:

The cars add significantly to the clutter, and while they may have been removed, the city council has been busy adding an array of metal poles and random signage in their wake.

Any notions I have of a fully pedestrianised college green are in reality fanciful. However there is no reason why the city council should not immediately establish an international competition to produce a coherent landscape design for college green through to westmoreland/college street & lower grafton street.*

I see no reason why the space cannot be closed to all traffic, including buses, on weekends at least, allowing what would hopefully be a fine plaza fulfil its potential as a buzzing public space where people would naturally gather & not simply pass through.

There is no other space like it in Dublin, as close as we have to an urban square, but in many ways more interesting. It is the place where the tangible north & south sides actually converge, the plateau at the end of various descending approaches, in many ways the real heart of the city.

I’d suggest that an IAP is required, but apparently they aren’t worth a fuck.

*I know people are going to come back at me about the luas BX line nonsense, but as far as i’m concerned, luas shouldn’t be let next nor near college green, and thats before we analyse the folly that BX is.

Footage of Gene Wilder & Margot Kidder in College Green 10yrs earlier than the King Haughey video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV38ygpbcbU

Palm tree planters from the corpo. Cream and green buses. Grimy pillars. Bank of Ireland still a going concern. Not much else changed.

Thanks for the help Graham H, I remember those pics from the first time around but couldn’t manage to locate them.
I think the black top surface has a lot to answer for. The cobbles make a clear civic gesture where as the blacktop cuts the space up to much. The pedestrian is certainly a second class citizen in this part of town.

@Frank Taylor wrote:

Footage of Gene Wilder & Margot Kidder in College Green 10yrs earlier than the King Haughey video.

No trees at least. Jesus the accent on Gene !

Cringe 😮

A couple of points of note arise from that clip (aside from the refreshing absence of trees). The brownish/burgundy colour on the seahorse lamps works very well, and reveals in much greater clarity the level of detailing which is largely lost in the current all-engulfing black coat of paint.

Also visible in the clip is the original mellowed granite facing of the Bank of Ireland prior to its wholesale removal/redressing just a couple of years later in the mid-1970s. The building looks so ancient there, in contrast to the pristine and rather fake appearance of today. The only fragments of original facing appear to survive around on Foster Place high on the flanking wals of Robert Parke’s Gandon-with-a-flourish House of Commons entrance.

Also interesting that the College Green trees only arrived post-1970. They must have been planted almost immediately afterwards,