New fossils for Natural Science Museum

@sinnerboy wrote:

I hope the Salafias and An Taisce’s et al can set about a useful campaign ( for once ) to prevent this

Why dont you do something about it yourself, rather than just bitching here and waiting for others to do something?… Others who you are also happy to make snotty remarks about – your attitude stinks, so either do something yourself, or why not just shutup?

And also inaccurate.

Leinster House is being effectively shut down for a year from July 2008 to September 2009 for structural repairs and general conservation works. Normally such works take place over the summer recess, but they have tended to be piecemeal, and wider works are required this time around.

Hence the Seanad is being temporarily housed in the Natural History Museum while the plans for its own restoration are devised. The Seanad is the only major user of the original Leinster House block, housed in the former Picture Gallery/Ballroom, with the Dáil seperately located in the RDS lecture theatre addition of the 1890s. Only a few journos have to be relocated from the upper floors of the house and some other (distinctly dated) offices including that of the Cathaoirleach.

Noel Ahern on Morning Ireland was hilarious. What we learned is:

Leinster House was built in the olden days.
It needs ‘structural works’.
The house itself was built in the 1840s.
The lecture theatre he believes dates from around the 1830s, and the Natural History Museum also ‘around that time’.
The house gets a lot of wear and tear.
Relocating the Dáil has ‘been talked about by various people’. ‘Nothing’s ever really happened on that’. ‘Meh’.

The End.

I hope this prompts them to put at least some of the exhibits from the NHM on display somewhere else during the three years it will be closed: ideally of course they should develop a separate facility somewhere else nearby which could be used for additional exhibits and public programmes when the original NHM reopens; does anyone know the Beggars Bush site where they have their storage and labs, are there parts of this that could be used as an exhibition space?

thanks GrahamH for correcting me . Glad the situation is temp only . hutton , I will buy a pack of hankies and gag this lunchtime . 😮 I accept your criticisms as fair comment

@sinnerboy wrote:

thanks GrahamH for correcting me . Glad the situation is temp only . hutton , I will buy a pack of hankies and gag this lunchtime . 😮 I accept your criticisms as fair comment

Fair enough – it wasnt intended either as a personal attack, and I too am glad that it is only a suspension (and hopefully not like the never-ending ‘suspension’ of the Leinster House lawn) that the “Dead Zoo” faces 🙂

From todays Sindo – you can see the subs are having fun with this one.

Senate move to museum dead as dodo

Mammoth task too much for staff
By JEROME REILLY
Sunday February 17 2008

Senators may not have to make an exhibition of themselves at the Natural History Museum after all, with the historic 18th Century House of Lords at College Green, Dublin Castle and even the Dail emerging as possible homes for the Upper House.

There are real concerns that moving the Seanad to the museum is a non-runner on the grounds of cost and because of the time required to document, pack and relocate more than a million exhibits ranging from the skeleton of an extinct dodo to a full-sized elephant.

The Director of the National Museum of Ireland Pat Wallace has said he is puzzled and concerned about the plan and doubts whether it can be done in the proposed timeframe.

Some senators are also sceptical about the move to the Victorian building, known to generations of schoolchildren as the “dead museum”

Senator Eoghan Harris believes that the old House of Lords in College Green might fit the bill as an alternative home.

Bank of Ireland owns the former Houses of Parliament building at College Green, which was the first purpose-built parliament in the world.

The bank said yesterday that they would “consider” any proposals about the possible use of the House of Lord’s chamber, although they pointed out the old parliament is home to one of their busiest branches.

The Seanad has to move because of repairs and engineering works. The main problem is that the three floors are suspended from the roof of Leinster House rather than from the walls. Over the years, more and more weight from people, filing cabinets, and other equipment, has meant that the rafters are now nearing maximum loading.

Senate leader Donie Cassidy says the it may cost hundreds of thousands of euro to make the Natural History Museum suitable as a temporary home of the Seanad.

“Bank of Ireland would, to my mind, be extremely suitable or even Dublin Castle. It seems to me that the museum is a fifty-fifty chance . . . and we will have to look at alternatives,” Senator Cassidy said.

The options available will be outlined to senators on Tuesday. Another idea being mooted is that the Senators conduct their business in the Dail Chamber on Mondays and Tuesday mornings, and on Fridays, when the Dail is not sitting.

Plans by the Office of Public Works to build a “room within a room” on the Natural History Museum’s ground floor to accommodate the Seanad could be delayed because museum staff are “not prepared” for the mammoth task of documenting and removing hundreds of artifacts, according to Pat Wallace

– JEROME REILLY

Glad that this is being reconsidered the NHM was never a suitable place as a temporary home; for once I agree with Eoghan Harris, although Im suprised that Donnie Cassidy hasn’t made them an offer to accomadate them in one of his hotels…Whats that Donnie? “The Comfort Seanad”, indeed 🙂

Haha 😀

An interesting development. Yes the Natural History Museum doesn’t exactly seem to be the ideal location, the only virtue being its location within the wider complex. The hokey setup of a prefabricated room is hardly an inviting prospect either.

The House of Lords is an intriguing idea, and a poignant one, but perhaps not suitable for ancillary accommodation. Public tours I think are only conducted on Tuesday mornings, so they wouldn’t be unduly affected anyway.

The Castle may appear to be the logical solution, acting as it does as the State’s function room, but it is so intensely used for commercial and governmental purposes that I severely doubt the State Apartments would be deemed a viable option. The Conference Centre however is the only other state location hardwired and adaptable for broadcasting services – a major consideration. The flexiblity of Seanad sittings might make this location a runner.

Interestingly, this has happened before. The Seanad was housed in the National Museum upon independence, and sat there for 3 or 4 years until the Picture Gallery was converted in Leinster House around 1925-26. At the same time, most of the operations of the Four Courts transferred to Dublin Castle until around 1929. St. Patrick’s Hall was transformed into the Law Library, and the Throne Room into the Supreme Court. The throne, lion, unicorn and crown were temporarily, eh, ‘removed’.

I always thought the Castle would have made a dignified parliament complex, especially if they booted the Corpo out of City Hall and used it as the main entrance, but I guess the old demons weren’t that easily exorcised in the 20s.

Good letter in todays Irish Times on this topic –

@Irish Times Letters Page wrote:

THE SEANAD AND THE MUSEUM

Madam, – Recent correspondence on the temporary use of the Natural History Museum for the Seanad should be put in the context of the “temporary” asphalting of Leinster Lawn over a decade ago.

This was allegedly to enable the construction of extensive facilities in the north wing of Leinster House.

Some years after completion of these works, with the “temporary” car park still in place, the matter was the subject of a question in the Seanad. A reply stated that resolution would have to await the initiation of a public-private partnership project to construct an underground car park.

It was not revealed how the entrepreneurial community might be motivated to provide free car parking to public representatives whose attendance averages fewer than 60 days a year.

In the meantime, a modicum of grass has been planted at the Oireachtas end of the Lawn and Seán or Síle Citizen may gaze up the tailpipes from Merrion Square.

Pending the restoration of the museum building for long-term use (offices for Seanad secretaries, maybe?) it would be advisable for us to question how our Government has been addressing its custodianship of this historic and cultural complex, bequeathed to the nation by the Royal Dublin Society almost a century ago.

I await the outcome without bated breath. – Yours, etc,

MILO KANE,

Bettyglen,

Dublin 5.

Well said.

Well I’ve since heard what the main structural issues are in need of addressing with Leinster House (aside from the basic salary of €95,363 x 166 being stowed away in there).

First is that some floors or parts of floors are actually suspended from the roof through the walls, and it is unclear whether the trusses in the roof are capable of supporting the loads the floors are under – especially with such intense modern use. Full filing cabinets alone place enormous pressures on old buildings.

Secondly, as with Lady Louisa’s notorious Dining Room out at Castletown, it’s unclear whether spans of ceiling on the ground floor are capable of supporting partition walls above. Some of these walls can be immensely heavy, usually comprised of thick timber studs and filled with brick. Thermal imaging may be used to determine what the structural form is in these partition walls without having to carry out invasive measures. If it’s largely stud, this should be a relief.

There’s also the possibility of an enormous protective roof being erected over the building, again as with Castletown. They’re prohibitively expensive, but make scheduling a lot easier and manhours more efficient, so probably worth it in the long run.

One interesting aspect of this whole saga has been the need for the OPW (and by extension the Seanad) to find a suitably grand setting for its business and in Ireland that means a Georgian or Victorian building. I always find it ironic that the “dignity” of either House demands that it be suitably housed in period splendour when concepts such as protection of the built heritage, conservation of important historical buildings and monuments, and action to save so many important buildings from the wrecking ball have received lip service at best from the Oireachtas for so long. Granted things have improved in recent years, but then our whole view as a nation of our built environment has changed from the days when the Oireachtas happliy let so many beautiful buildings be destroyed around the country. But not changed that much…think of recent issues such as Brinsley Sheridan ruin and the Leinster Lawn and house in Killarney going to ruin for lack of attention. Any how about Senator Donnie Cassidy dumping a red brick box at the top of Parnell Sq…Dublin’s new cultural quarter. I took a walk by here yesterday and found the former Scoil Mhuire in a disgraceful condition.

Perhaps the Seanad could be housed there! They could spend a bit of cash doing it up for the year and at least hold back the decaying process that has so obviously set in. Or maybe a bland and bulky office block randomly deposited on some street somewhere would do. Or if all else fails….how about the House of Lords.

It’s always puzzled me on my Dublin visits why Agriculture House is allowed to remain (especially as it muscles in on the view of Govt Bldgs from Merrion Row – and it’s such a crap bldg anyway). Its demolition (it took the olace of the CofI training college, I believe, itself an interesting pile) would allow a complete rethink of the Kildare Place area. There could be a building to house the Senate, plus more offices (inevitably), plus a modern version of the demolished Georgians on Kildare Place – as official res for the Taoiseach, etc.? Is that all too fanciful? The template for the new-build could be the pared-down classical of Kildare House, or a contemporary version of it.
In the meantime, there’s only one place for the Senate – the HoL of course!

On second thoughts: if you don’t demolish it, at least chop off a couple of stories and reclad it in a decent stone cladding – you could still built a new Senate House connected to it as the centrepiece of Kildare Place.

I hear there are plans afoot for new buildings in Dublin Zoo, which would probably leave one or two units such as the snakes pit left over. Has anybody any better suggestions? :p

Could Farmleigh be used ? I ask not knowing myself .

The Exam Hall in TCD – in return for some tasty piece of opw real estate of course.

Farmleigh I suspect will be too far out, and again couldn’t be constrained for a year and a half. A central location with some form of ancillary accommodation seems to be necessary.

I couldn’t agree more Stephen regarding the contradiction in the quest for salubrious hosting of the Houses of the Oireachtas and the completely uninterested approach to the built environment around it.

I’ve been doing some work recently in this area of the city, and you really are so struck by the lack of ownership that the ‘institution’ that is the State has over the area. It has little affinity with its host buildings, the surrounding streets, nor with being in Dublin at all. It is inward-looking, difficult to distinguish, and uncomfortable with urbanity generally and the notion of being in a capital city – perhaps aptly reflective of Irish society generally – reluctantly hosting itself in a make-do-and-mend fashion in a bizzare collection of buildings for the sake of formality and image.

And it goes back a long way. It is breathtakingly extraordinary that what was the most architecturally rich network of residential Georgian streets in the city was utterly ravaged by property speculation up until the 1980s, directly across the road from the national parliament. Parliamentarians need only have looked out their windows to see what was happening to the city. Quite literally the setting of the most significant collection of cultural and state buildings in the country was allowed to fall apart right around it without so much as a whimper by the majority of elected representatives.

Above all the ‘notables’ of the Dark Ages, the Dawson/Molesworth/Kildare/Frederick dissection was perhaps the most insidious and most damaging, and yet generally receives the littlest of attention. What was easily the most eclectic and most charming street in the capital in the form of Molesworth Street – the thoroughfare that creates the vista towards the national parliament – was quite literally ravaged by demolitions, with whole terraces extracted like teeth to make way for the most bland of infill. Everything from the earliest of Georgian mansions, to Victorian instiutions, to early 20th century neo-Georgian modernist stock was wiped out. Without question it is this area of the city I most regret the loss of historic fabric, and one that is really too difficult to get over. It was so insidious, so all-encompassing, so merciless as to make it near impossble to forgive. The fact that the state, state agencies and state bodies (including the national broadcaster) to this day effectively endorse all of this redevelopment through ownership and long-term leases makes it taste all the more bitter.

This extraordinary photograph from the 1980s from the Ken Finlay Collection demonstrates in graphic detail just how much was ‘taken out’.

The sprawling, spewing, offensively titled Setanta Centre in all its arrogant phased glory. Just look how much was demolished, across every single street – it beggars belief. Even the imposing Masonic Hall with adjacent Georgians clinging on for dear life is reduced to a pathetic straggler in the midst of the sprawling behemoth of orange brick.

The view on Molesworth Street today.

Coupled with Sun Alliance House on the corner with Dawson Street, European House directly opposite, Agriculture House on Kildare Street, the granite-clad monsters on South Frederick Street, the terrible RTÉ office repros (with recent mirror glass)…

…and the yoke (under construction in the first pic) at the corner with Nassau Street, this area was effectively demolished in the interests of the state, bulldozing itself into a city it knew nothing about nor wanted to know anything about.

Today Molesworth Street has a charm and elegance provided one is brought blindfolded half way down the street and then told to face in one direction only. Preferably with ear plugs, given whatever grace it had left until recently as a quiet enclave has been utterly shattered by the insanity of road engineers diverting traffic directly off the Green into this historic street. Parked cars, railings and traffic cones now flank the pavements, whilst hoards of glitzy family saloons clog up its roadway. It is nigh on impossible to even cross the road at the above junction, which nobody appears to have considered.

It’s such a shame, as this street could have been one of the gems of the modern city, with small-scale shops, cafés, galleries and boutiques leading up to the parliament complex. Instead the whole area is a maze of blank office frontages and the odd freak surviving Georgian. I don’t know if its personal over-exposure to the area, but I always sense an element of disbelief with tourists as they wander in a daze around this bizarre quarter of contradictions.

@GrahamH wrote:

Farmleigh I suspect will be too far out, and again couldn’t be constrained for a year and a half. A central location with some form of ancillary accommodation seems to be necessary.

I couldn’t agree more Stephen regarding the contradiction in the quest for salubrious hosting of the Houses of the Oireachtas and the completely uninterested approach to the built environment around it.

I’ve been doing some work recently in this area of the city, and you really are so struck by the lack of ownership that the ‘institution’ that is the State has over the area. It has little affinity with its host buildings, the surrounding streets, nor with being in Dublin at all. It is inward-looking, difficult to distinguish, and uncomfortable with urbanity generally and the notion of being in a capital city – perhaps aptly reflective of Irish society generally – reluctantly hosting itself in a make-do-and-mend fashion in a bizzare collection of buildings for the sake of formality and image.

And it goes back a long way. It is breathtakingly extraordinary that what was the most architecturally rich network of residential Georgian streets in the city was utterly ravaged by property speculation up until the 1980s, directly across the road from the national parliament. Parliamentarians need only have looked out their windows to see what was happening to the city. Quite literally the setting of the most significant collection of cultural and state buildings in the country was allowed to fall apart right around it without so much as a whimper by the majority of elected representatives.

Above all the ‘notables’ of the Dark Ages, the Dawson/Molesworth/Kildare/Frederick dissection was perhaps the most insidious and most damaging, and yet generally receives the littlest of attention. What was easily the most eclectic and most charming street in the capital in the form of Molesworth Street – the thoroughfare that creates the vista towards the national parliament – was quite literally ravaged by demolitions, with whole terraces extracted like teeth to make way for the most bland of infill. Everything from the earliest of Georgian mansions, to Victorian instiutions, to early 20th century neo-Georgian modernist stock was wiped out. Without question it is this area of the city I most regret the loss of historic fabric, and one that is really too difficult to get over. It was so insidious, so all-encompassing, so merciless as to make it near impossble to forgive. The fact that the state, state agencies and state bodies (including the national broadcaster) to this day effectively endorse all of this redevelopment through ownership and long-term leases makes it taste all the more bitter.

This extraordinary photograph from the 1980s from the Ken Finlay Collection demonstrates in graphic detail just how much was ‘taken out’.

The sprawling, spewing, offensively titled Setanta Centre in all its arrogant phased glory. Just look how much was demolished, across every single street – it beggars belief. Even the imposing Masonic Hall with adjacent Georgians clinging on for dear life is reduced to a pathetic straggler in the midst of the sprawling behemoth of orange brick.

The view on Molesworth Street today.

Coupled with Sun Alliance House on the corner with Dawson Street, European House directly opposite, Agriculture House on Kildare Street, the granite-clad monsters on South Frederick Street, the terrible RTÉ office repros (with recent mirror glass)…

…and the yoke (under construction in the first pic) at the corner with Nassau Street, this area was effectively demolished in the interests of the state, bulldozing itself into a city it knew nothing about nor wanted to know anything about.

Today Molesworth Street has a charm and elegance provided one is brought blindfolded half way down the street and then told to face in one direction only. Preferably with ear plugs, given whatever grace it had left until recently as a quiet enclave has been utterly shattered by the insanity of road engineers diverting traffic directly off the Green into this historic street. Parked cars, railings and traffic cones now flank the pavements, whilst hoards of glitzy family saloons clog up its roadway. It is nigh on impossible to even cross the road at the above junction, which nobody appears to have considered.

It’s such a shame, as this street could have been one of the gems of the modern city, with small-scale shops, cafés, galleries and boutiques leading up to the parliament complex. Instead the whole area is a maze of blank office frontages and the odd freak surviving Georgian. I don’t know if its personal over-exposure to the area, but I always sense an element of disbelief with tourists as they wander in a daze around this bizarre quarter of contradictions.

*Cough, cough* Patrick Gallagher, FF-favoured wide boy

haven’t you heard about the dail bypass???:confused:

or the yellow brick road

the Agriculture House???? pull it down… Guinness is about to be banned in south America why because its a meal deal…

nice to see the inner tangent back.

Great synopsis Graham…but those office block shouldn’t go to waste. How about a Senate in the passport office?