Re: Re: New street idea sun only

@johnglas wrote:

ctesiphon: Ihaven’t seen the new Dunne’s corner in the flesh (as it were), but it generally seems to have been welcomed and it certainly makes a bold statement, However, the ‘articulate Georgian corner’ that preceded it was in a terrible state and was in any case pretty much understated. I have a complete aversion to losing the historic built heritage of any city, but I remember Sth Gt Georges St as a gloomy and uninviting corner of Dublin. It has been revived and reworked in the idiom of our time (eclectic as that is) and future generations will judge its worth. ‘Georgian’, like ‘contemporary’ covers a multitude of sins and it is not all of equal worth.

Well, to be fair, it was gunter who described it as ‘one of the few articulate “Georgian” corners in Dublin’, but if you suspected that I have issues with the replacement, you’d be right.

You’re also right that ‘Sth Gt Georges St [was] a gloomy and uninviting corner of Dublin’, but I’d argue that this was a direct result of the site assembly carried out by Dunne’s Stores itself over a 20 (or so?) year period, so they were authors of the dereliction as well as saviours of the street (reminds me of Machiavelli’s Prince killing 10,000 at the start of his reign, then abruptly stopping, thereby appearing saintly). In addition, the pair of two-bay houses due east of the gable-fronted redbrick on Stephen Street were damaged in a very suspect fire- a fire which prompted the above photo a few years ago.

I do quite like the Dunne’s infill, but I think it’s a case of matching the street by happy accident rather than by design, as it seems to be the Dunne’s house style regardless of context. Remember Henry Street?

Rather than re-hashing old opinion here, I’d suggest a quick look at that old thread on SG George’s Street- if I remember rightly, I’d stand over what I said there on the subject of this infill, and my from-memory assessment of the buildings removed.

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gunter- you’re safe enough. That’s one of the few times when I’ve managed to follow up on the intention to photograph a patch of the city before the demolition men got there. But I’ve been digital for the last while, so who knows what might prove valuable in another five years!

EDIT: Also, I do like the life that Dunne’s has brought to the western side of the street, but it appears not to be enough as the George’s Street Pharmacy recently moved from the west side to the east side, presumably the better to compete with the other chemist on the Central Hotel (George’s / Exchequer) corner. Prior to the opening of Dunne’s, the centre line of SG George’s Street seemed to be the notional western boundary of the south city retail core- less so nowadays.