Last tenants vacate York Street ahead of demolition

I once foolishly and drunkenly wandered into one of these buildings very late at night, it looked very derelict but i was lured in by an open door and a blue light, kept walking up stairs very apprehensively looking around, it was silent and all lit in a strange blue light, very surreal experience. lucky i got out without any hassle too, very strange experience.

I saw an elderly lady let herself in to the last house on the right on Sunday as I ‘regarded’ the terrace of houses. I shudder to think of their market value. Are the buildings listed ? Read somewhere that they are to be replaced by something for the RCSI and more flats ?

No, they are not listed, but you can bet your bottom dollar that some environmental crank is about to start a campaign to keep them. “These are the last of the genuine tenements in Dublin,” he/she will say. “Hundreds of people died of TB and poverty inside these buildings and I think it’s disgraceful the Corpo is proposing to just knock them down and build new ones instead.” 🙁

I never think of myself as a crank Sue, but I do regret that these buildings will be knocked, they are fine hansome vernacular buildings and an example of how tenements were refashioned in the early part of the C20, there is nothing else around quite like them and they help add variety to the housing stock. I am suprised that they couldn’t be retained and rejuvanated and used as a mixture of student and social housing. The doorways were listed but where removed from the list, I am assuming they will be saved in some way.

@notjim wrote:

they are fine handsome vernacular buildings and an example of how tenements where refashioned in the early part of the C20, there is nothing else around quite like them

That sums them up very well notjim. It is their Georgian revival nature, built well outside the parameters of the 1930s that we usually associate the ‘movement’ with that is interesting. The fact that the terrace even seems to retain a large amount of Georgian brickwork and some doorcases (the corbelled ones) makes it all the more quirky and worthy of note – though clearly not of retention in the eyes of the CC.

I passed the terrace only this morning wondering about its fate – there’s still lights on inside anyway.
The whole terrace could’ve been gutted of its grim, gloss paint-adorned institutional interior, and entirely new accomodation suitable to modern needs built if necessary.

The demolition just smacks of ‘cleansing’ the area, as if there’s still TB spores floating along the corridors and out onto the street.
And what’s the likelihood of these distinctive buildings of character and history being replaced with another pile of dross to match the Mercer Hotel across the road?

Well, that’s it really. The buildings should be re-enlisted for a new purpose because otherwise, more likely than not, what will replace them will be much poorer. There’s very few modern gems around there and, its cynical of me I know, but I can’t imagine one arising to accommodate student flats.