O’ Connell Street, Dublin
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A Boyle
I agree wth you about some of what you say. The debate is not about where they should go whether a tourist is to be up around Cathal Brugha Street looking for a phone on the side of a building or trying to get into the GPO at 3am in the morning to ring somebody after getting off an Aircoach is another matter. There is no point in telling me they should not go there because they are going there and that decision has already been taken. Most phone calls from public phones are made with call cards and these last for up to thirty minutes sometimes. A suggestion that they could be incorporated into bus stops would not endear me to standing trying to talk on a phone trying to compete with the clattering of a 97D engine and inhaling its spew while trying to talk is not the issue I raised. All I wanted to know, assuming there are qualified people on this board to tell me, is what would be more acceptable, not where they should go.You make the point (correctly in my opinion) that something small like the Eircom phones in Grafton Street. Incidently, these were not installed in ’88, they were erected in 1996 one overnight in circumstances that I won’t go into. The “proto-type” I have made myself is designed around the same size. The complete unit is made of stainless steel to match the bins-spire-street furniture. There is no “paint”. Graffiti can not be written as I have designed each panel that a word will not fit, even the base is tubular as is the outside frame.
All I am asking, once more, is that if there is someone qualified on this board who would look at the phone when it is erected. If they have a better plan, and I am sure someone will, I will gladly avail of their services. There seems to me to be an awful assumption by three or four people who constantly write letters to the Evening Herald that O’Connell Street belongs to them alone (and a few more) and everything is wrong unless they agree while at the same time they agree to nothing even if it was paved with gold bars.
After (again) this mornings incident at 3am there is more concern for what is happening on O’Connell Street than phones. In the next week or so Smart Telecom and Eircom will erect what they like without any consultation wheras I am trying to consult, install, remove, replace and upgrade until the most appropriate design is provided. Therefore I am not interested in comments about where the phones should be located, but how they are located. The phone I install this week will be simply bolted to the ground to an existing plate. I would expect there will be changes at which time a new dessign is manufactured and the units changed in half an hour. On the other hand, if Eircom are prepared to go to the same trouble as I am, and, they produce a better design I would have no problem whatsoever conforming to that as I feel that all the phones throughout the city should be exacly the same.
I have to say Fennetec that you seem a little intolerant to debate on this subject. This is not how the boards work. So many people see these boards as a free source of professional advice. However the purpose is to debate and discuss issues of architectural or planning interest and if you put it about that you are introducting an element onto O’C St, we will all legitimately offer our two cents worth. This can mean discussing the merits of even having phone kiosks on the street, where they should be placed, etc
There is the 2362rd post on this OConnell Street board and the pages are full of interesting comments from amny people (not just the 3 or 4 who write to the Herald 🙁 – are there any of those). If you dont want to enter into the spirit of the boards then go somewhere else. Hire a bloody architect and pay the going rate for your advice! I am sure you are a busy man and dont want to get bogged down posting put you have to understand that people arent just hear to help you out.
Personally from the little you offer by way of description, I think the phone booths you propose sound okay. I’ll certainly look out for them, though I have a mobile. I still stand by my point that the public phone booth is an increasinly redundnat piece of street furniture and is therefore better suited to being an element of the other pieces of street furniture proposed, ie the kiosks. These are not bus shelters as you suggest but are meant to be shops, cafes and public facilities…the perfect spots for phones I would have thought.
@Fennetec wrote:
That is exactly the type of response I would expect to get elswhere. I was trying to solicit ideas on the type of pedestal that would be most suitable, not a running commentary on the commercial aspects of running a payphone company.
This was not a comment on the commercial aspects of running a payphone company but a question about the usefulness to the public of payphones given their tendency to be broken and the space they take up. I would favour fixing payphones to one of the myriad of street furniture already existing on the street, rather than constructing yet more vertical poles, reducing the space and visual amenity of the street further.
O’Connell street has a number of internet/call shops so if someone is caught short without a mobile they can sit in shelter, quiet and comfort and make a call with the rates shown in advance. They even have phone books.
@Fennetec wrote:
DCC took the decision to clean sweep all the footpaths on either side of the street and relocate the furniture on the central median.
Yeah, we’d noticed :rolleyes:
The city’s newest municipal landfill cunningly disguised as a pedestrian walkway.In the next week or so Smart Telecom and Eircom will erect what they like without any consultation
I don’t see how this is so given that DCC now have complete control over every coat of paint and brick laid on O’Connell Street from here on in – and these units are even going in on public property!
You give the impression Fennetec that you have had consultations with the street’s architect which is good to hear, in which case surely he has the final say over what phones are to be installed?
No reflection on you, quite the opposite by all accounts, but the fact that a private operator is resorting to an architecture website for design advice in relation to a public telephone in an SPCS, which in turn is going to be mismatched to other temporary phones by other operators, who have consulted with no one, speaks volumes about how this Area of Special Planning Control is being operated.My impression of meeting Killian Skay one time, when he lectured our group in college, was that he was particularly uninterested in hearing any differing opinions on the O’Connell Street project.
Interesting to hear Eircoms disregard for planning regulations… I would have imagined that the installation of new kiosks required planning permission.
Stephen, and all who replied.
First of all I want to thank everyone who replied. It is impossible for me to address all the various comments. I will try and get time to post a comprehensive outline of what has happened since Telecom Eireann lost their monopoly on payphones on a web page and create a link to that page later. That is as fair as I can be and my intention when I made my fisrt post was not to instigate a slanging match between us. Having said that, I can’t blame any of you for making some of the comments made since you are not familiar with the High Court cases that have taken place over the last ten years on this issue. The law is not alone an ass but the very people who run this country are donkeys and I am not referring to the officials of Dublin City Council but to the statutes and planning laws.
One quick point I will make about Planning Permission in reply to Stephens last post. In 1996 I applied for permission to erect ten payphones in Dublin because I thought it was the correct thing to do. At that time there was no payphone from Christchurch to Westmoreland Street, Temple Bar or Grafton Street. I wanted to agree a design. I had to nominate my locations to Eircom to assure line availability. Eircom went out at 4am on a Sunday morning and placed phones on each site without any permission. They sprung up like mushrooms all over the City overnight one weekend. Their claim ” a payphone is a Public Utility under an old Posts & Telegraphs Act and is exempt from Planning Permission.”
This resulted in Dublin City Council engaging Moore McDowell and Peter Bacon to conduct (at very large expense) a report on payphone requirements for Dublin City. (I would say at that time McDowell and Bacon knew as much about payphones as I do about architecture) While the study was being undertaken Eircom continued to erect payphones when they liked, where they liked and how they liked. The gas part of it was that the study concluded that there was a requirement for 42 payphones in Dublin 1 & 2. Not 30 or 40 now lads, but precisely 42. DCC took a High Court Injunction and placed a Moratorium on payphones in Dublin City.
It might be worth remembering that areas like Rathmines are as important as Dublin City Centre and when the Moratorium was placed Esat, ITG, Eircom, Smart all headed up to Rathmines and look at the state of the place now.
They (DCC) also banned advertising on the Kiosks which as you will see is also ignored. An English company, with an English titled Lord on their board of directors got permission for fifteen sites while I still awaited mine. They then sold the sites to another English company, Esat BT who in turn sold them to Smart. All the time the millions involved in the transactions was IMO effectively a game of monopoly with sites that were on Dublin City Councils property. So, when someone tells me, an Irishman from Laois that I can’t put a payphone in Dublin and a British company can put them outside the GPO with advertising for an English owned Radio Sation I get a bit tetchy, notwithstanding the fact that I obey the rules about not advertising McDonalds and do not create kiosks that look like showers to advertise shampoo or punk radio stations.
For each post I make there are about twenty different arguments one could make in reply and I understand that. I did not, as suggested come on this board to solicit free services from anyone and perhaps whoever made that suggestion would like to withdraw it. I would be quite happy to locate my phones anywhere else in the City providing nobody else was being allowed to put theirs on O’Connell Street either. I am determined, and if any of you had to go through what I have been through in the last ten years, you would be determined, that if phones are going on O’Connell Street, and they are, that I will get my share. Outside of that I am only trying to set a standard that should have been set for me by the bigger hitters.
I will be unable to reply to any posts at least for a few days but I will take a peek in here again.
Thanks to you all, no hard feelings, relax I won’t destroy your street.
Thanks again.
Tom
News: (Copyright Sky News)
Payphone Installed on Liffey due to increasing demands from immigrants.
Architects attack payphone in O’Connell Street.
I certainly dont want to come across as hostile to you Fennetec, I appreciate you raising this intriguingly, murky matter in the first place, but you are seeking advice (my words ) if not solicting a service (your words). My comment was just simply that you should expect thinsg to go a little off your agenda when you turn to an internet forum (no matter how respected or authoritative :p )
First of, I am not involved in Architecture and have no such qualifications. I need your help please.
The design I am trying to create – or want you to create – must include the following:
No sharp edges if someone walks into it.
Preferably stainless steel.
Small, it only needs to house a phone and not a shower.
Must compliment existing street furniture.
Base and central pillar (I propose) must be round so as debris and paper will not collect around it.I will install the unit I have made (with permission from Mr. Killian Skay) this Tuesday north of the spire. If any of you guys wander by would really appreciate your criticism and assistance. Working together we can get it right or near enough, imposing some of the existing monstrocities on this new street with their Bronx style advertising is not the way forward.
These are both from your post, with my emphasis. I dont usually like to get pedantic put you seem to be suggesting that I have somehow misrerpresented you.
No hard feelings. 😉 I can imagine just what a nightmare you have been dealing with. A similar situation was mentioned in relation to Bus Eireanns attitude to prospective competitors in another post. And we are all aware of the attitude of utilities with regard to undertaking roadworks which only resolved itself (or did it) when legislation was passed in the Dail. But such is the semistate world we live in…albeit privatised.
I applaud your civic sense in trying to do things by the book and your efforts to agree a standard design are also worthwhile. My comments regarding the placing of phone booths on the street still stand.
Stephen
You put your case forward very well Fennetec – one can only imagine the hoops and hurdles of the industry.
So if as you say, there is a now a moratorium on the placing of phones in the city, how is it that you’re installing one, or has this since been revoked? And now that private operators are installing phones as profit-making ventures, surely these cannot be classed as utilities? In any case, even Eircom cannot just dump a phone anywhere, such as in the middle of a pavement, so surely there is an element of local authority control over where they are sited, and if permitted at all?Other development on the street taking place at a slightly higher altitude is proving to be a lot more intrusive. If like the phone, this lighting unit is temporary, fair enough, but there is no way in hell this yoke is staying up there on a permanent basis:
It had better be just a test strip!
Poor old Fidelity is looking very distraught up there – what are they doing to me?!
The same with your man across the way – there’s new floodlighting being installed in place of the single black floods that used to light each statue (though Hibernia had two).
😮
This floodlighting is certainly one drawn out project!
Doesn’t Mercury have an extraordinarily long neck! Bit like the OPW putting that strip up! God(s) it looks terrible, :p surely something less obtrusive can be designed.
At least you’ve given her a suitably period receiver 🙂
They all have strangely long necks – especially Hibernia:
Mercury as mentioned:
And for 1993 recasts, they are all in a disappointing condition. Perhaps they weren’t the most chiseled of replicas to begin with…
From An Post:
“Mercury is [aptly] the Messenger of the Gods; Hibernia represents Ireland and Fidelity, with her faithful hound, represents the trust placed by a nation in their postal service.” (snigger)Of course Fidelity and her hound perform a double act on O’Connell Street:
Long necks indeed although its the hardness of them I would be concerned about……:p
I`m guessing that this little lighting array would have had to pass muster with the aforementioned Mr K. Skay BEFORE it was nailed into position on O Connell St`s most influential facade……But of course … 😮I only noticed this morning on my wander that a small-ish part of the footpath on middle O’Connel st outside Budget Travel was never re-paved and still has a mixture of concrete and glass. The jewellers still have their tiling on the footpath which I assumed would have disappeared as well.
It is possibly related to ownership issues. Often parts of the pavement are actually owned by the people who own the premises on which it is on front of. Could possibly have been surrounded by railings at one stage too. Not sure though in this case.
Yes you see a lot of this around. Its happened on Henry Street and Abbey Street as well. Some areas have been repaved but others remain as they were. I think it could also be related to basements under the street. Its unfortunate though, as it leave the area looking messy and unfinished. Perhaps they will be done at a later stage (as was the case with a numbe rof spots on Abbey Street). Unlikely though.
There were also comments realier on the thread about the glasstiled basement lights along the street which were left in situ and not replaced. You might have a scoot back if your interested.
It is indeed due to basements – many of the 1910s and 1920s buildings were rebuilt with basements as per their predecessors, with some lightwells only being blocked up in recent times, hence the blobs of concrete spread over some of them. These concreted areas provide the only means of natural light entering these basements and so in practice are owned by the individual properties, even if not being used at present. Whether they do in theory is another matter…
In any event it’s nice that the granite stones surrounding them have been kept in place, though the concreted areas should of course be treated. In a way, this regeneration from an historical perspective has acted a bit like 70s hardboard in covering over the interesting quirks of the paving of the Upper Street, so it’s good that some elements remain.However this matter does pose an interesting question. Whatever about the lightwells of the 1920s buildings, the pavements outside the doors of all of Upper west were originally owned by the various townhouses in the form of railed basement access points, and of course one still remains with repro railings outside the RDH house and to a degree with Ned Kellys next door. So if say Lynam’s Hotel or Flanagan’s wanted to put seating outside their premises, do they still own the pavement and hence do not have to pay DCC the recently introduced pavement rental charges?
People sit on the bases of these sculptures that have been installed along the street. What does that say? – not enough places to sit down in Dublin.
.Agreed, and of course the Anna Livia fountain (remember her?) had the same effect. Thats a nice view of the side pavements, the rows of trees really liven up the street.
I also note that all the old light fittings remain attached to buildings. A job for the cherry picker that got so much use on GPO. And….what news about the planned cleanup of the Spire.
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