O’ Connell Street, Dublin

Originally posted by Graham Hickey
The new Savoy sign is really awful, the contrast with the distinguished upper floors is cruel – it sticks out like big lump, tacked onto the front of the building. The large expanse of silver cladding, Connolly Station style, makes the overhang even more clunky than it was, and the use of this modern material certainly does not create the effect it intends – to contrast the old facade with sleek contemporary design. Rather it makes the overall appearance worse; at least the old unit was blatently dilapidated, itching with potential. This yoke is just second-rate, for everyone to appreciate for aother 20 years.
Saying that, the doors etc look well, as do the electronic displays.

I know we have discussed this before, but I was looking at it yesterday and I have come to the conclusion is that its main problem is the lack of symetry of the new entrance. I don’t think that the new sign would look as bad if everything underneath it was shifted to a more central location within the builiding. The fact that the newer bottom part of the building is off balance to the rest off the building takes away from it dramatically.

Great News!

Acording to a friend who works in the Gresham, the Hotel is to close for four months in March in order for the hotel to be upgraded to five-star standard. This is a much needed boost if it goes ahead. Apparently the Hyatt group are posed to take over the hotel.
It was one of the greatest tragedies for O’Connell Street that the Gresham fell from being one of the worlds finest hotels (voted best hotel in the world in the mid-sixties – no other Irish hotel achieved such status). It is definitely the finest hotel facade in Dublin – restrained and elegant – and thankfully, in spite of attempts to demolish and replace with a shopping centre in the mid seventies, it remains stately in a part of the street that is otherwise neglected. The old Ryan group never did the hotel any justice, failing to invest in the hotel throughout the seventies and eighties while other Dublin hotels were opening or upgrading – though to their credit, they at least never destroyed the hotels exterior or lobby.

Extending footpaths, palnting trees, and new streetlighting will only go so far in upgrading O’Connell Street. Developments, such as the possible upgrading of the Gresham, will play a crucial role in making the street a quality and pleasant destination.

At last a concrete example of the streets improving status is in the pipeline.:)

I think Supermacs is really the truly offensive one of the four, occupying a prime corner site, with its cheap nasty horrible, horrible white framed doors & windows, dated slanted profiles, posters pasted all over the windows, cheapo internal fixtures for the world to see though its picture windows……the pink paint on the panels of the upper floors looks cheap and jarrs with the red brick further up.
Lovely windows upstairs though

The vile ground floor of Supermac’s is certainly in stark contrast to the pretty upper floors. Interestingly, this building was the only one in the block between the Quays and Abbey Street that needed to be rebuilt after 1916 – as opposed to not needing to be rebuilt, i.e. the two nice originals (on the right in the picture) that were demolished in the ’70s to make way for the predecessor to Schuh 😡

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The thing that really strikes me about that photo is the amount of signage on the buildings. I am particularly suprised by the one on the old ICS building between Westmoreland Street and D’Olier Street.

The ‘Happy Ring House’ sign is a relic from that era too. The funny thing is, if somebody put up a modern sign of equivalent impact today, there would be shock and horror, but the Happy Ring House is considered part of the character of O’Connell Street.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

It’s interesting you mention the brick colouring of D’Olier St & Westmoreland, I’ve always wondered which street won the battle to have ‘their colour’ displayed on the prestigious corner building facing onto the bridge at the apex of the two streets – was it Westmoreland’s red or the stock bricks of D’Olier?
It’s so frustrating as I’ve only ever seen black & white engravings of it 🙂

I meant that there are two different brick colours on D’Olier Street itself : while the Irish Times buildings on the west side of the street are in the yellow-brown stock brick, a couple of the much-altered survivors on the east side (Cara Travel & Funny Biz) seem to be in red brick, which is surprising.

Here’s a photo of the original building at the apex (with Smith O’Brien in his original position in the foreground) – though I don’t think there are any clues as to the colour of the brickwork, texture wise. The fussy Victorians, not being able to handle the relentless order of the Wide Streets Commissioners’ plain, unified street-elevations, had already dickied up the building with cornices & balustrades etc. But that wasn’t enough, so they demolished it in 1894 & built the (unquestionably lovely) baronial gothic ICS building.

Probably the worst of O’Connell Bridge House’s numerous sins is that it destroys the primacy of the ICS building, which was so obviously built to be a central dominating landmark in the D’Olier/Westmoreland composition.

If a replacement building was going to be as good and as appropriate as the ICS building in that site, that’s one thing, but the way that the still-fairly-intact original WSC’s D’Olier/Westmoreland scheme was allowed to be whittled away – usually for crap new buildings – between 1960 and 1985 was disgraceful! It should have been recognised for the hugely significant piece of European city design that it was.

There was the Carlisle building and its replacement (say no more), then 4 more originals for D’Olier House in the late ’60s, then the pointless demolition of the Ballast Office in ’79 for a sterile fake, then the mirror glass building to each side of the Paradiso restaurant facade, which took 2 originals and a good quality 1920s replacement on the Fleet St corner, then 7 more originals behind the ICS building in the early ’80s; 3 on the Westmoreland side & 4 on the D’Olier side for a depressing pastiche.

Supervalu are putting a new food store similar to that on Aston Quay. Exactly what the area needs.

I see that the DCC have finally reinstated the missing paving slabs on Henry Street……and the street looks the better of it. Would be good too if they reinstated the shiney silver bins too, keeping the contemporary look to the street!

It never began in the architectural sense, an understanding arose that not a cent had been put in in over 20 years so the grand plan was to maximise 41 and sell 42. CBRE should have a result on that quite soon 5m guide 4.75m bid, Who knows