Gasometer

Punchbowl, at the very beginning of the Rattle and Hum Video (or DVD) by U2 there is a movement of the camera down the docks. This shows the structure that I think you are referring to (It is actually great in that it shows loads of the docks during the 1980s). It is quite cheap to buy as far as I know, and, if you like their Joshua Tree era, there are some very good live versions of their songs aswell. There is also more contrastable material in the images used for their October album (1981 I think) with how the area looks today.

Phil

There is a reimagining of sorts taking place off Barrow Street. Among the warren of new development there (overdevelopment if ever I saw it) is the building a new apartments and offices within the cast iron gasometer. Looks quite interesting

this thing? didn’t realise it was gone.

from fantasy jack’s site…

Great shots SW101, but I don’t think that is what Punchbowl is referring to. Those shots are of the Gasometer referred to by StephenC that now has the ‘Gasworks’ apartments being built within it. I think the one Punchbowl is referring to was a great big white structure that used to be beside the south quays of the Liffey.

ah. i’ll go back to my cave so.

I was just relieved you didn’t slag me about my music tastes again! 🙂

@phil wrote:

I was just relieved you didn’t slag me about my music tastes again! 🙂

nah, i’ll just stick to “you’re so bleedin old, remembering stuff long gone”.

Hmmm the Gasometer on John ROgersons Quay
I’l have a look through my photo archives

Its in the right hand side of this picture

@Punchbowl wrote:

I find it amazing that a lot of people can’t recall this ‘ building ‘. It was fairly tall ( Moreso than Liberty Hall? ) and definately visible from any viewpoint along the Quays.

It pops up quite a bit on old 80’s shows ( Perhaps this was to create the illusion of a high rise city? ) and most Shay Healy related programmes.

Phils Picture doesn’t really give you a true sense of the size of it… Or am I just remembering it too fondly??

Its RoryWs picture.

I think SW101 is such a young pup that he wasnt around in the 80s to remember it! 🙂 I however, being so old, remember its dominant presence quite well. However, the fact that it was around up as far as 1998 makes it incredible that people have forgotten it so quickly.

I loved the quays way back in the 70s early 80s. My father was a bike dealer and Raleigh Ireland had a factory on Hanover Quay so we’d be in Dublin fairly regularly – alway remember the last of the cranes and the gasometer…

I barely remember it in ‘real life’ too 😮

I’ve a pic of it here in a book, it’s at least 10 storeys anyway. When was it built and what was it used for – a modern version of the Victorian holding tank before natural gas?

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

I loved the quays way back in the 70s early 80s. My father was a bike dealer and Raleigh Ireland had a factory on Hanover Quay so we’d be in Dublin fairly regularly – alway remember the last of the cranes and the gasometer…

I used to love the way you’d pass under the loop line bridge and you were into another world beyond the Dart line. It acted as such a barrier as if to say “no shopping or offices beyond – ships and warehouses only”

@Rory W wrote:

I used to love the way you’d pass under the loop line bridge and you were into another world beyond the Dart line. It acted as such a barrier as if to say “no shopping or offices beyond – ships and warehouses only”

I still think it is like a barrier separating two worlds. You can really feel a different aura once you pass under that bridge. There seems to be more space or something. It is strange.

It’s partially to do with the bridge itself I think – that time old effect used by architects to accustom you to large indoor spaces; when you emerge from under the bridge you are kind of fooled into believing the place to be much ’emptier’.
But certainly there’s also a real contrast, particularly beyond City Quay or Custom House Quay on the other side, so much so that it’s so strange to suddenly see the 50s flats out at the Grand Canal Basin there, looking like in the middle of nowhere

The Conference Centre of the Spencer Dock scheme Mark 1 was apparently inspired by the Gasometer……the Gasometer tipping over to reveal the new docklands……how inspired can you get?! :rolleyes:

To my knowledge it was taken down in 1993.

yeah 1993 – as I was working on the top floor of a southern Merrion Square house and you could see the welders cuting up the top level….

@Paul Clerkin wrote:

yeah 1993 – as I was working on the top floor of a southern Merrion Square house and you could see the welders cuting up the top level….

Nice Image Devin,

1993 tallies for me as well, I was on the site in 1997 and all that was left was the surviving chimney a couple buildings and some industrial plant that looked like something out of a frankenstine shoot.

Punchbowl

There is a really good replica print of the Guinness Barge ‘The Malahide’ being unloaded at the site of Stack A, the Gasometer takes up about 25% of the background, it is about 28 x 16 send me a personnal message and I’ll get you one

I agree. That image is really excellent Devin. Now it makes more sense that people don’t remember it as much if it was taken down in 1993

Wow, what a fantastic picture. It doesn’t even look real – like one of those touristy photomontages from the 50s 🙂

That tank clearly was massive!

As you might have worked out, the pic is a telephoto view from the top of the Guinness Storehouse (but before the sky bar obviously). It’s on the cover of an old An T report.

you cannot beat that foreshortening effect of a large telephoto

esp. where there’s a concentration of towers & spires & things.

the other gasometer thingy on shelbourne road that they are turning into apartmetns has begun getting its windows fitted. looks really good. well worth checking out.

i liked the suggestion at the time that it be painted up to resemble a giant pint of guinness….

You’d have to pad it out a bit with foam or something – lots of foam 😀
Anyone know how tall it was, and when it was built?
Please don’t say it has the honour of being the tallest building ever built in Dublin – wouldn’t surprise me :rolleyes:

It sat on the horizon on the Georgian Mile as well.

Flippin heck – you learn something new every day!
That is just crazy!

😀 Just Imagine the uproar from An Taisce and The Irish Georgian Society if that was proposed today!

The structure that you are referring to was known as the Gasholder. The Gasometer is the other one that is currently being converted to accommodation.
The Gasholder had a subroof which went up and down within the structure depending on the amount of gas within. The operators used to keep a canary in a cage (just like in the mines) in the void between the two roofs to monitor gas leakage.
An external lift ran up outside the structure to give access to the roof and it was from this roof that movies of the ferries coming in to the north wall were used in the 1960s (?) film “Rooney-O”.
It says something for the (lack of) townplanning of the day that they allowed it to be constructed at the end of the Fitzwilliam St. vista but I think you would have seen the Kevin Roche Conference centre from this vista also ( the Conference Centre building bore a striking resemblance to a Dyson vacuum cleaner!)

@millennium wrote:

It says something for the (lack of) townplanning of the day that they allowed it to be constructed at the end of the Fitzwilliam St. vista but I think you would have seen the Kevin Roche Conference centre from this vista also ( the Conference Centre building bore a striking resemblance to a Dyson vacuum cleaner!)

That’s right, and it was one of the biggest arguments against it as far as I remember. Although I must say it reminded me more of R2D2 from Star Wars than a Dyson!

I wonder if there is a correlation between the elimination of the gasometer and the rapid rise in Georgian offices prices as a proportion of new office prices in the late 1990’s. I cannot imagine the Fitzwilliam kilometre with that yoke overhanging the Merrion Square end of it.

There’s an aerial pic here:

http://www.murrayolaoire.com/urban/projects/dublin_docklands/index.html

It was very big.

And not quite as shapely as their creation for the end of Sir John Rogersons Quay

HI, im new to the forum and im very interested in this project.

Would anyone have the name of the company that sandblasted the towers before construction started? I think it was a scottish company

Cheers