fallon & byrne building

Yep, I’m nearly sure it was a telephone exchange, tomredwest, if not necessarily built for that function. If I recall a recent article with the owners of Fallon & Byrne in one of the Sunday supplements, they said they passed by the building a few years ago, “fell in love with it”, got access, and it was still chockablock with telephone exhange equipment – a relic in itself. Indeed, I was trying only recently to remember what it once looked like – did it have whited-out windows? And if it was a telephone exchange, why were decorous ceramic tiles attached to the shopfront in the 1980s? Presumably it had a retail use in the interim? The original side entrance to Dame Court with granite Tuscan columns is a delight.

Christine Casey observes that the premises was built as a large group of shops and warehouses for Hely’s, Pimms and The Central Hotel in 1897, which very much ties in with the character of the building. The cast-iron bases to the interior columns, incidentally, are identical to those of Arnotts, itself of identical date. They’re very attractively paired in places too.

thanks for that graham, she’ll appreciate the info.

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2006/12/24/story19791.asp extracts:
The shop, wine bar and restaurant covers 21,000 square feet and aspires to be a Manhattan-style gourmet food and wine store. It spans three floors of a huge building that once housed the city’s analog telephone exchange… “It took two years from initial contact with Eircom to signing the lease… It was slow, as Eircom was not entirely sure it wanted to rent the building, as it meant decommissioning a lot of equipment, which was costly.”

http://www.greatfood.ie/item_display.asp?cde=1&id=689 extract:
“In terms of the shop design, we were lucky enough to find a beautiful warehouse building, previously used as a telephone exchange by Eircom. It has 20ft ceilings, wonderful old cast iron pillars and a large skylight at the back that floods the shop with natural night. We have tried to stay faithful to that look, restoring the century-old oak parquet floor, putting some metro tiles on the wall but, on the whole, intervening as little as possible with what is a great structure. We wanted to move away from the sterile modern look, opting instead for the romance and charm of old-world food shops.”

Michael Hartnett (1941-99) worked as a night telephonist in the Exchequer Street exchange for a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Niamh Gleeson’s 2007 play for Marino’s Five Lamps Theatre Company, The Telephone Exchange, set in 1963, follows the lives and loves of four telephone operators in Exchequer St, whose JFK infatuation binds them together, as they swoon to the great showband hits.

Back in the old days – until well into the 1970’s and perhaps later, “Night ” Telephonist was an exclusively male occupation in Dublin, “Ladies” as they were called then, aka women, were all barred from working the night shift in Dublin.

(Dont forget that before the ability to direct dial many places long distance, night work was no sinecure, connecting incoming and outgoing international calls either at cheaper, but still incredible costs compared to now, or coping with American time zones etc.)

Many of the Night Telephonists were either studying (sometimes for years or decades), writing plays, poetry or novels, waiting for better things to turn up etc etc.