O’ Connell Street, Dublin
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Aha, one must also factor in whether it’s an artisan house, or lower-middle class, middle middle class or upper middle class – in Victorian terms of course 🙂
If it’s a typical smaller single-storey terraced villa, with maybe one or two steps up to the front door, then Georgian sashes were common until about 1865, esp if the developer was a tight-wad, which was common in the 1860s cause the real cash to be made in that decade was in larger housing.
Alhough admittedly most housing like this would have a two-over-two as a drawing room window by 1860 with Gerogians to the rear, so if yours is similar – um – it would have been a tad out of date at time of completion!
Some areas of the city tended to be more ‘progressive’ than others, so it also depends on what general area your house is in.thanks for this graham, its a terraced villa style house, one story at the front, two at the back with a foolishly small number of foolishly large rooms and 20% of the floor area given over to the hall. i really like it but i can’t work out why houses where built like this, what was the market? its in the east wall by the way.
so for the drift off topic.
Ireland is great for its halls, no developer here would ever contemplate building a house even today without a hall, unless it’s a bedsit or similar – unlike the UK where walk-in ‘Neighbours’ style houses are everywhere. UK based people I know are constantly amazed at the size of halls here.
The East Wall would explain the windows – typical lower-middle class housing stuffed in on cheap land near the railway line that no one else wanted – accociated with dirt & disease etc. In contrast with Clontarf across the water on comparitively high ‘healthy’ ground, hence larger more fashionable housing here.
If your house was the same but in a different location, say off one of the middle-middle class Circular roads, it would have a two-over-two window at the front, being in a more fashionable area.Villas were built as you describe simply to copy larger houses, despite them having no room! So you’d have a large drawing room to the front and a statement of an entrance hall simply to impress visitors, to the detriment of the rest of the house.
To devote so much space to entertaining and reception of guests was absolutely crucial to lower-middle class people to distinguish themselves from the masses – of which there were a great many in Dublin! I know it all sounds so simplistic and ordered to divide society up in this way, but they’re just general descriptive strokes – with a lot of blurring between them all.To make it relevant – O’ Connell Street is 2 miles from the East Wall.
O’ Connell Street has windows too 🙂I like the way, in the Merrion and especially Fitzwillian Square areas, if the ground-to-top floor windows of a house have been changed at some point, there’s almost always a nice 8-over-8 or 10-over-10 original sash lurking in the basement.
200 year old sash windows kick ass! You can’t beat the encrustation of paint, the panes of sparkling old glass here and there, and the general well-aged look.
Does n’t the area in front of the GPO which is now almost complete look absolutely great, especially now that the foilage is opening on the trees. What great vision and urban planning here and what a brilliant public space that has been created. It has given this part of the street an air of dignity, solemnity and style too. It will be a great location for holding any official events, commemerations, parades or pageants etc…
What a superb job and money well spent!New guidelines for the design of shop fronts for O’Connell Street have been launched in an effort to restore O’Connell street back to its former glory.
The guidelines have been prepared by Howley Harrington architects in partnership with Dublin City Council.
A statement form the Council said: “Local businesses have also an important role to play in the physical transformation of the street and the restoration of the main civic thoroughfare of our capital city to its former architectural glory.”
The council has already demonstrated its commitment to the provision of a revitalised O’Connell Street with the Spire of Dublin and the ongoing construction of a grand civic plaza to the front of the GPO.
City Manager John Fitzgerald commented: “By the end of this year, LUAS will be traversing O’Connell Street at the junction with Abbey Street, making the street more accessible and bringing many new visitors to the street. Some shops and businesses have made their contribution by properly maintaining or successfully installing well designed and carefully constructed shop fronts and facades.â€
Blue, thanks for that. where can one get a copy of those guidelines? are they on line or can they be got from the Council Offices?
Copies of the Shop Front Guidelines are available from Paul Crowe, Central Area Office
paul.crowe@dublincity.ieThanks for that Blue.
Phil
A little OT, but I noticed some really nice shop frontage work for the ‘Diagem’ phone shop at the top of Capel street. It was nothing special before (to say the least), but the building has been given a renovation, and the shop now has a tasteful and well finished steel and black glazed finish, with internal security shuttering. Discreet but effective signage. Was most impressed.
Thats because its a DCC flagship project. part of Living Over the Shop. The CC renovated the buildings so I guess their idea of what a good shop front should look like would be part of that. Its just a pity that their planning dept didnt see any inconsistency in allowing the monstrosity across the road to be built (corner Capel St and St Marys Abbey Luas line)
Yeah, I was also very impressed by these shops and now I’m even more impressed to hear that DCC are behind it.
But I totally agree, the new monstrosity where the Luas crosses Capel St is so out of place its unbelievable. Although its not finished there is enough of it to know what it’s going to look like. It’s just wrong on some many levels. This building wouldn’t look out of place in an early nineties technology park but certainly does on Capel St.
Its like the DCC had to redress their good work further down the street.
If that’s the building I think it is – heaven preserve us – have you ever seen such rubbish. It’s like a time capsule dug up from the depths of a 1992 cesspit! What a shame.
Was on the plaza on O’ Cll St today – wow I see what Greg F is talking about. All the railings are gone from the median and the area looks fantastic! And the median stonework flows almost seamlessly into the road, something one couldn’t really appreciate till now. What a pity lighting wasn’t sunken into each of the lighter coloured squares – how amazing would that have looked at night!
The first of the carriageway lamposts have gone in too – complete with brackets to hold celebratory banners. There’s posts going onto the median too for the smaller pedestrian lights which’ll look really good.Forgot to say – Penneys are proposing a complete revamp of their store on the street, along the lines of the Mary Street branch, to start in the autumn.
My ‘informer’ didn’t know if any exterior works are happening – although one can presume the marble on the ground floor is going – heres hoping Mr Builder accidentally pulls down the rest of the facade while he’s at it.
Interestingly the second floor is occupied by none other than their vast stock room, stretching right up to the main street facade. No wonder BHS wanted a four storey concrete facade at the front – although they almost succeded down poor Princes Street. They’ve a huge stock room in the basement too.No. 2 Capel Street – Diagem – was not part of the DCC flagship – it was just 3 & 4. The refurbishment of 2 was a private initiative.
There was a ghastly oversized plastic fascia on the Diagem shop previously. But underneath that there was actually a nice ’50s black vitrolite shopfront. When the owners applied to refurbish the building a few years ago they sought to replace that shopfront with a modern wooden one. an taisce’s dublin planning committee asked that they retain the vitrolite one. Parts of the vitrolite were cracked and exact matching replacements couldn’t be got, so it was agreed to replace the whole thing in the same style. It’s a pity the original vitrolite couldn’t have been repaired, but I think the end result is good and looks smart.
Now if only somebody would do something about that awful ‘Pops Deli’ one on the corner.
Anyone see the arty air spot light show… (aka Bat signal)….which kicked off last night on O’Connell Street as part of the celebrations for the accession of the new membership states to the EU.
An art installation designed by Rafael Lozano Hemmer, which involves the participation of the public to design the light constellations, it looked brilliant as it lit up the sky with the Spire amongst it all. People stood in awe. It should become somewhat of a permanent feature.Massive new light fittings are being placed at four corners of the new plaza – I await with interest….
Originally posted by J. Seerski
Massive new light fittings are being placed at four corners of the new plaza – I await with interest….COOL! I take it that these will be to light up the spire??
At last!!
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