kildare place

How bizarre – I passed the place barely an hour ago thinking exactly the same thing!
Surely the wall can be moved back – it would appear there’s only a yard or something behind it.
The museum is looking stunning now, a new building has emerged from the shadows.

Doesn’t really matter how good it looks, it is the shere absense of pedestrian usage east of the Dail or West of Dublin Castle – that is really the nail in Dublin city centre’s coffin IMHO. Who is seriously going to use Kildare Place anyhow?

Isn’t there a similar Garden behind the National Concert Hall? Now that is a problem, that should and could be solved – perhaps expand the program of that old Classical building – the National Concert Hall? Dunno.

Notice the ratio of Cafes to Pubs now in Baggot Street at nightime – you don’t have to go to the pub anymore to ‘go out’ for an hour or two. Which is nice if you have to meet people in the morning and don’t want to feel like you have been to the pub the night before.

Considering that one could potentially open up that park space behind the National Concert hall – through to St. Stephen’s Green directly too with some persausion.

I accept that some of the movement which happens in the Grafton Street/Baggot Street axis could someday spill down past the side of the Shelbourne and into Kildare Place. It is a space I haven’t thought very much about actually, and is an interesting problem. I must actually go and visit the National Museum and see how that work, before I make any more observations. There is a similar space on Dawson Street that is really doing much either.

Thanks for the Iveagh Gardens name, it is years since I ventured into it. Isn’t there another secluded garden around Kevin Street College too? Just near to Camden Street, off Camden Row?

Originally posted by garethace
Isn’t there a similar Garden behind the National Concert Hall?

I am not sure, but I think those gardens are belong to UCD.

Iveagh Gardens are OPW.
Yes there is a small park in an old churchyard behind Kevin Street DIT – very nice and peaceful. Must have photos here somewhere, I’ll have a look.

Part of the restoration of the museum is the reopening of the ‘back entrance’ permanently.

I say ‘back’ like that as ironically this was originally planned to be the main entrance for the musuem.
It was planned that Kildare Place be a major civic space for the Victorians – with potentially another institution to be built to surround the square.
There was a big Victorian pile of a building eventually built on the site of the Dept of Agriculture – now that I think of it, wasn’t there two Georgian houses on the site of the Govt Bldgs wall, that were demolished in the late 50s – largely considered to mark the beginning of the destruction of the Georgian city.
Interesting that the NCH is mentioned – the Italinate tower of the former Exhibition Building/Winter Palace – now the NCH – was moved to Kildare Place to act as a boiler chimney for Govt Bldgs – it was later removed as it poised a security risk to the complex.

What is the big government departmental granite building oposite Kildare Place? I had forgotten about that building actually.

Former Department of Industry and Commerce
(changes name with every election)
http://www.archeire.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/southcity/kildare_street/deptcommerce.html

Nice decoration – the building has some nice details, which are captured well in the photos. But ‘No Interior access’ sums it up all too well.

“Dept. of Enterpirse, Trade & Employment”
Minister: Mary Harney.

That little laneway beside it has a weird name too if I remember correctly doesn’t it?

its called ‘liitle school lane east’ or something along those lines. ive got a pornographic memory you know. did i spell that right?

Something along those lines yeah.

What of the surface carpark that has appeaered inside St Stphens Green close to the South Boundary. so vitually opposite Iveagh House is a surface carpark adorned by galvanised pallasade railings.

I saw a short piece about the debate currently raging in the British Museum in relation to the purpose of a Museum and its collection in modern times. It appears that the curator Neil MacGregor is hoping to increase his funding from a Labour Government, by advertising the Museum as a space to appreciate simultaneously different worlds, different cultures in the context of one building. A lot of other notables, disagree with this use of the British Museum in a game of political idealisms.

Interesting debate, I am sure it is well covered on the web.

[quote now that I think of it, wasn’t there two Georgian houses on the site of the Govt Bldgs wall, that were demolished in the late 50s – largely considered to mark the beginning of the destruction of the Georgian city.
[/QUOTE]

Here they are…

Thanks for that Hiivaladan. Interesting view from what seems to be 1956/57 – just look at that ‘rubble’ shoot coming out the window :(. Strangly agricultural gates to the left too.

The left-hand house is quite similar to the Georgian still standing across the road, now the Shelbourne car park, currently undergoing restoration. It’s of similar mid-century date, given how tiny the windows are, and of course the Venetian. I wonder if there were further houses to the left forming a terrace, prior to the construction of the National Musuem? Lovely little turreted curiousity to the right there too 🙂

As has been mentioned a few times on the site, the great sandstone Italinate chimney looming to the rear of the houses was formerly located on Earlsfort Terrace, built principally as the ventilation shaft and secondly as the campanile of the newly converted Royal University/UCD around 1885.

Interestingly, the clock and bells installed were the GPO’s 1818 originals.

In an extraordinary example of make-do-and-mend, the entire tower was dismantled around 1915 and re-erected behind the RUI’s city centre colleague’s premises: the Royal College of Science on Merrion Street. There it acted as a chimney stack for the complex’s new-fangled turf-fired heating system (though what they had used since the college’s completion in 1911 is open to question). Its rooftop was rather crudely converted from lofty pinnacle to industrial chimney pot, as can be seen in Hiivaladan’s picture.

The tower was finally dismantled in the early 1970s, probably as it posed a security risk to the Leinster House complex in the newly troubled North. The bells and clock faces remained dumped in the grounds of Earlsfort Terrace for about twenty years after the tower was moved – anyone any idea where they are now?

Interestingly, Kildare Place has another connection to Dublin Castle other than the fireplaces salvaged from Number 3 in the above picture – and indeed to the Italinate chimney. When Tracton House – a fine 1740’s house on the site of the red brick Bank of Ireland premises on the corner of Merrion Row beside the Shelbourne – was demolished in 1912, its magnificent Apollo Room or back drawing room was donated by the bank to the State. Curiously for so early in the 20th century, the National Museum built a seperate annex onto its complex in Kildare Place to house the room, and furnished it as an example of 18th century Irish craftsmanship. Here it remained until about 1939, when it was dismantled after the outbreak of war to provide extra space for storage of turf for the very central heating station pictured above! It was not without public outcry, with numerous mentions in contemporary newspapers.

The room, including its magnificent stucco ceiling and panelling was then put in storage, being shifted between the back of Iveagh House and the Royal Hospital (why was the RHK such a dumping ground over the years?!). Eventually, after the disasterous fire in the Castle in 1941, it was decided to incorporate it into the State Apartments, partially as compensation for the loss of the extraordinarily bizzare Presence Chamber that was completely destroyed. However, as the panelling, frieze and cornice had been hacked about so much over the years, there was no option but to reproduce in fascimile all but the ceiling of the room.

So hence the odd connection between the three places and structures 🙂

Kildare Place School was one of the first primary schools in Ireland. Did a very little seearch and found this:” In 1811 a society was founded to promote education for the poor in Ireland. In 1817 it was named the Kildare Place Society (from which

the school got its name). It got support from a lot of important Christians. It also gave out almost one and a half million books by 1831.

Kildare Place School used to be on Kildare Street. It moved to the Rathgar/Rathmines School for Girls and Boys in 1960.” from the present KPS (now and since 1960 in Rathmines) website.

Thanks, Graham and Julius.These are fascinating pieces of history. 🙂 As Notjim noted,what a pity Kildare place can’t be re-instated in some way. It would be an attractive little square if not for that deadening wall. Perhaps now that they don’t have to worry so much about security something could be done. Pity about the Agriculture building, though. Too bad the de-centralisation programme couldn’t move it bodily and transplant it in the middle of a field of turnips in Offaly or Longford.