Re: Re: A new Clarence Hotel re-development with destruction on Essex St., Temple Bar

@shadow wrote:

Maybe its Fosters……..

XXXX, more likely.

I’m not sure which is worse – your posting of the images, or my admitting to knowing what they are and refer to…

Definitely your admission. Without a doubt.

I have vague memories of the building from before its last renovation. I’m pretty sure it was there I went for dinner with my fellow jurors one day in summer 1993, to a non-descript function room a couple of floors up. And I remember being in the original bar on the ground floor another time, but the details escape me (the details of the interior, that is…). Part of the problem is that my memory of the bar has become conflated with a photograph of the old bar of The Dolphin Hotel included in Sean Rothery’s ‘Ireland and the new architecture’, but that might be because they weren’t entirely unalike. Anyone know?

The building certainly became taller in the renovations, but I think there was some type of penthouse above the attic storey. As you say, the copper dates from the renovations too.

Other than that, I don’t have any more specifics or pictures.

Edit: I’ve just remembered that a friend has a set of party photos taken in and around the lobby. It was 14 years ago (not a jury party, I should add), but I can ask anyway.