OPW – Architectural Works

Galway City Museum – great addition to the city apart from the “portacabin” on the roof

Marine Institute, Oranmore, Galway – this is the exciting side facing the sea. The rest is fairly standard big laboratory blocks

It’s supposed to be a particularly good place for year out and part 3 students to get good detailing and construction experience. Interiors in both these buildings are beautifully crafted although Galway City Council are doing their best to ruin the museum with rather tacky displays and by either blocking up or attaching ugly polarizing film to all the lovely glazing.

Well, they certainly do stand out if nothing else!

The yealla box over the entrance door there looks remarkably similar to the Labour Exchange in Cobh -an award winning composition by the OPW.

Then there was the case of the floating show boat the built in dry-dock for the Gardai in Cobh -another composition that certainly does stand out!

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Speeking of the OPW and their furtive doings, I see that a new hoarding has gone up around that long derelict site on the corner of Bride Street, opposite Kevin St. College.

It turns out OPW are building a new Garda Divisional Headquarters here, linked through to the existing Kevin St. Garda station next door.

This is one of those ‘State Authority Works’ that doesn’t go through the normal planning process. There is a Planning Ref. 4751/07, but the drawings are not on the DCC website. The notice states that the drawings were available to view for a few weeks last august, in 51 Stephen’s Green.

Did anyone see these by any chance?

The description doesn’t particularly inspire:

Demolition of existing 2 storey store etc. (I hope that is not the good stone structure with the steeply pitched roof near the former Shell station on Bride St.). . . new 2 – 3 storey building with flat roof on western boundary . . . 5 storey building (with14m high mast) on eastern boundary (Bride St.) with monopitched glazed link in between . . corner entrance.

Coincidently, the IT carries a feature today on the desirability of creating a ‘Museum of Dublin’ with good contributions from Peter Walsh and others. I heard, last year or the year before, that DCC were looking at the Kevin Street Garda Station, former St. Sepulchre’s Palace, as a possible site for such a museum.

I presume the OPW put their dead hand on that little idea.

Where you would develop a ‘Museum of Dublin’ is probably a discussion for another day, but at St Audoen’s Church (both) and Cook Street / Cornmarket always looked like an option to me.

Still on the subject of Dublin not having a ‘Museum of the City’, I passed by the windows in the Civic Offices the other day, where you can look down into the basement, and it looked like someone had gattered up all the random stones that used to be associated with the remnants of the city wall here, and piled them into skip bags. Remember when we were supposed to get a ‘New Civic Museum’ under the bunkers to celebrate the Viking City that building the bunkers destroyed?

On that OPW Garda Divisional Headquarters which is going on site at the Kevin St. / Bride St. corner, I take it that no archiseek posters have any info on the proposed development.

This is a photograph of the site taken last week. Today, they were knocking down the stone building that has the scaffolding on it in the picture.

I had thought that the reference to ‘demolition of a two storey stores’ refered to the structure adjoining the Garda station at the back of the site (the pile of rubble in the photograph).

I know it may only have bee a 19th century structure, but it was well built, in good condition, and had a striking steeply pitched roof. Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to work it into the re-development, it could have been an interesting foil to a contemporary corner structure.

Another example of a Development Plan objective not counting for much.

I photographed it a few weeks ago on the assumption that it just might be swept away, not that it actually would be! Very disappointed to hear of its demolition.

A curious structure that possibly has early 18th century origins. It’s also quite similar in style to the former Rubrics courtyard in Trinity and the early form of the 1712-1717 Castle works. The stock brick chimneys are clearly 19th century.

Render being stripped. It must have been lime – it walked off.

Interesting former window opes revealed.

And enormous roof trusses.

Some of the demolitions to rear at that time – presumably this has all since been cleared. A lot of stone in there.

I’m sure all development options were considered, buit I think it a shame that the HQ could not have been moved off-site, and the entire historic enclosure maintained as a cathedral quarter, with museum etc. A site swap with the National Archives in a few years time could have been ideal…

Could it be that half the bewildered people you see walking around town with cameras aren’t tourists, they’re archiseekers!

Up-date on demolition today.

Why take off all the render if all they’re doing is demolishing it? Any chance they might be going to rebuild it as part of the new dev? If not, then all I can say is that An Taisce, the RIAI and DCC are just a bunch of wimps for allowing it to happen.
Anyway, St Sepulchre’s should have a much more appropriate use; judging by the news the ‘Guardians of the Peace’ are scratching their arse in their barracks while the yobs are terrorising the streets.

johnglas, there is not a hope in hell of the structure being rebuilt. I imagine the exercise they went through was a process of ‘record by destruction’ or whatever that phrase is that archaeologists use as they wipe the slate clean in advance of development.

On your second point, most of the tradional Garda force are ok, it’s those new, shorter, slightly effeminate gardai with the pony tails, you don’t try humour with those guys. Them and the guys who’ve been busted down to traffic.

gunter: thanks for the info – judging by the picture, htey’d have been much better demolishing the dull grey 1970s layer-cake opposite. My regret is I have no picture in my mind of the building just demolished, so can’t place it in context. Time I got back to Dublin for a major walkabout.
Don’t want to get into a discussion on the polis, but being ‘OK’ and getting the hard job of policing the streets done are two different things. The publicity of the recent street violence gives even me some pause for thought about casually walking about there (and that is not like me at all).

johnglas, The structure in question was never a street frontage building, it was on the inside of a fairly dense urban block until road widening occured in the 1960s.

The building is outlined in red on this O.S. map from the 1940s. I’ve put a blue box around a probable 17th century building in the Garda complex that had it’s render knocked off a while back revealing good early brickwork, and was then promptly, and crudely, re-rendered in case anyone got notions about it’s worth.

You can see from the photographs already posted that the stone building was a significant structure and it looked to be in pretty good order. The DCC Development Plan goes on about the sustainable re-use of older structures, ‘though they may not be protected structures,’ and the site is state owned and borders on a very important medieval enclave, that’s the infuriating part, would there ever be a better case for the imaginative retention and re-use of such a structure?

Incidentally, look at the effortless way that small urban spaces were made, just at the junction of streets, by recessing the frontages slightly in contrast to the narrowness of approach streets.

gunter: thanks again for your time and trouble – how did you guess I was a map-freak? I will now spend hours pouring over that and speculating on the might-have-beens! yes, the ‘organic’ development of townscape is squanderd at our (or, more accurately, the city’s) peril. It completely reinforces the view that there is a potential ‘cathedral close’/major ‘heritage’ quarter struggling to get out there. Bite the bullet, pedestrianise most of it and acquire some vision! Edinburgh might be dour, grey and up its own arse (and actually very English now), but it has a strong vision of itself. This part of Dublin could be a real ‘medieval quater’ (OK, I’m not suggesting Disneyfication) in terms of atmosphere, enclosure and layout, but – alas – not much chance of it I reckon. Copshops are places for the populace to avoid if they can help it and since that use seems to be consolidating, the area will be lost to the public forever.

@johnglas wrote:

Why take off all the render if all they’re doing is demolishing it? Any chance they might be going to rebuild it as part of the new dev? If not, then all I can say is that An Taisce, the RIAI and DCC are just a bunch of wimps for allowing it to happen.
Anyway, St Sepulchre’s should have a much more appropriate use; judging by the news the ‘Guardians of the Peace’ are scratching their arse in their barracks while the yobs are terrorising the streets.

johnglas, maybe you should investigate the planning circumstances of this before going shooting your mouth off about about various bodies. It’s a Part 5 planning application, which basically means that the applicant – the OPW in this case – can grant themselves permission for it. DCC is not the planning authority; it can only make observations (<a href="http://195.218.114.214/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=4751/07&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%20DCC’s Observations). An Taisce also objected on the basis that the that the nature and extent of the medieval enclosure of the former St. Sepulchre’s Palace complex had not been adequately investigated and identified in the application, and because of the demolition of a late-17th/early-18th century building forming part of such a significant historic complex, which potentially incorporated reused medieval masonry. Afaik the DOE also objected. But the OPW have gone ahead with it …

I think you’re being a small bit harsh there Devin. If DCC had wanted to impose it’s will on this site, it would have found a way. It’s only because the proposal is for a Garda facility that the OPW didn’t have to go through the normal planning process, but they still have to go through that process on everything else that’s not security related. Surely a bit of leverage could have been applied.

It could be that the proposed new Garda structure is going to be fantastic, I just don’t have any information on it beyond what was supplied in the planning notice. In the absense of any persuasive argument for the new development, it not unnatural to be a bit concerned about the structures being demolished

My issue with the OPW is that, on the face of it, the site would appear to hold the key to the ultimate conservation and re-use of St. Sepulchre’s Palace, in some cultural capacity, (it was reported that a ‘Dublin City Museum’ was being actively considered), and to develop the site in advance of any master plan for St. Sepulchre’s would seem to be ill judged.

johnglas, I wouldn’t waste too much time on that map, very little of that streetscape is recognisable today and even fewer of the buildings survive. You do know that a dissatisfaction with the present state of things, a fondness for the classical, messing about with maps, that’s how you know who got started, nein!

Devin: loosen up; I’m not on the ground, so I don’t know all the facts. You’re the one ‘shooting your mouth off’ and perhaps protesting too much. Statutory bodies can waste a lot of time and energy playing games with one another, but if the end result is the demolition of a valuable building, where does that get us? Where is the arbiter that can decide in disputes of this sort? If there isn’t one, that’s not my fault.
Sorry for touching a raw nerve, but I thought this was a site for comments, even mistaken ones. Perhaps we should should just leave everything to those with a vested interest and keep our uninformed mouths shut…

Gunter: I have absolutely no territorial ambitions on Dublin!

@gunter wrote:

If DCC had wanted to impose it’s will on this site, it would have found a way.

I don’t know. The whole way this plan has proceeded has been very closed. Pressure was coming from somewhere to the effect of: ‘It’s happening and that’s that’.

Anyway, here is what’s going to be built, which it must be said looks totally fresh and new and unlike anything that’s ever been built in Ireland or the UK in the past 20 years, ahem:

That’s one those Gardas I was talking about, isn’t it?

I suppose this does provide some kind of an ‘enclosure’ defining the St Sep site; what doesn’t seem clear from the plans in the DCC site is whether or not this is a replacement for or an addition to Kevin St GS. If the former, then it’s positive and it’s arguably a better building than Cannon (did they mean ‘Canon’?) Court next door, which is unbelievably four-square, dull and pedestrian in such a sensitive location.
PS I did not realise that the even duller ‘layer-cake’ bldg opposite was the National Archive. Struth!

this effort will make a balls of an important corner site, paying full attention to bride street only, and judging by the render, it needn’t have bothered.

Thanks for the pic Devin.

Yes, thanks again Devin for the picture, I hope you didn’t have to do anything too unpleasant to get it.

A couple of quick thoughts on the building:

It very much office park aethetic rather than civic building

The atrium feature is reminiscent of the McCullough Trinity Library, rising a storey higher than the higher of the two blocks. If the atrium runs the full length of the building, as it appears to do, it’s joing to be very prominant from the west (the St.Swpulchre’s Palace side).

To me, the long curved range looks curiously top heavy and the non apparent support at ground level, combined with the heavy banded design, looks a bit Corb without the pilotis. The new office block on the corner of Lower Mount St. and the Canal does the same thing. I think this might work better if the ground floor was double height, or if the support was expressed. I could be wrong.

That brief moment when it looked like contemporary architecture was going to engage with a historical context in a contrasting but sensitive way, I take it that moment has passed.

Just looked up that stone building on the Rocque maps, and it does actually seem to be there in 1757, or a predecessor of the same size and shape!

Maybe GrahamH was right there, with the evidence of the blocked-up windows etc. The building was a single room wide so obviously the other side (west elevation) was the front and the larger blocked up window (with stone reveals), between the two chimney stacks, was a stairwell landing window? I’d love to see a pic of the west elevation, or an aerial view, if anyone has come across one.

The justification for demolition is not increasing!

No, indeed! Any chance it was a domestic building of some sort for the palace – a stables or grainstore or slavequarters (I jest) or something similar? There might be an estate plan in St Patrick’s archives, wherever they are.

I got a couple of aerial shots on Google, but they’re not distinct enough to tell what the west facade looked like. We are making a bit of an assumption that this was the main facade of the building, just based on the east elevation appearing to be the back.

Was it a stores or a stables, with living quarters over? I don’t know. I know of a, bang up to date, four storey house in the Kilmainham area dating to c. 1725, which had a similar nearly blank back wall and chimney arrangement that was totally stone built in an era that was dominated by brick usage, so that type of structure did exist in Dublin. It may have been a house for someone associated with the cathedral, that was converted in the 19th century to something else with a new roof and chimneys.

There’s an estate map by Kendrick from about 1750, but the only versions of it that I’ve seen are copies of a map by Drew in 1890 that is supposed to be based on the Kendrick map. It seems clear from the Rocque map that this building (or it’s predecessor) was part of the palace complex, was entered through the complex and probably was designed to address the complex, it certainly wasn’t some random building on an adjacent site, which is kind of what it looked like in more recent times. The fact that the building in question makes no impact on the Drew map may not mean that it wasn’t significant in Kendrick’s time, just that the significance may have been lost by 1890.

This copy of the Drew map and a view of St. Sepulchre’s Palace come from ‘The Liberties of Dublin‘ ed Elgy Gillespie 1973

I don’t want to labour the point, but if the stone building merited the closer examination that it apparently got in the last few days, with the render being knocked off (presumably for the purposes of making a record of the structure prior to demolition), why wasn’t that process of examination carried out last year, before any final decision was made to demolish the structure, a contract to the develop the site signed, and the hoarding put up?

@gunter wrote:

I don’t want to labour the point, but if the stone building merited the closer examination that it apparently got in the last few days, with the render being knocked off (presumably for the purposes of making a record of the structure prior to demolition), why wasn’t that process of examination carried out last year, before any final decision was made to demolish the structure, a contract to the develop the site signed, and the hoarding put up?

Well, it’s a rhetorical question; the Gardai were gettin their new station at Kevin Street, medieval archbishop’s palace or not!

@gunter wrote:

The west facade.

Some terrible sloppy, self-contradictory information in the planning application documentation. Holes can easily be picked in the Executive Summary on page 2 of the OPW Planning Report (signed by a very senior OPW architect). For example:

“One existing building and two adjacent stores are proposed for demolition … These buildings were not part of the original Archbishop’s Palace but were incorporated or built onto the complex when the Dublin Metropolitan Police took over the Palace in 1806.”

So why is the main building that was demolished depicted in black along with the rest of the palace complex on Rocque’s map of 1756 (while small buildings fronting the surrounding streets in the area are just lightly shaded)? This surely indicates clearly that the building was part and parcel of the palace complex prior to 1806?

Then, having mentioned that buildings on Bride Street were demolished for road widening some 30-40 years ago, it says:

“[The building for demolition] appears on the Rocque map of 1756 parallel to a similar shaped building facing onto Bride Street. One of the buildings was subsequently demolished by road widening work.”

Well if you’d taken a quick look at the 1847 OS map included in the Gowen report in your own planning application OPW, you’d have seen that the east of the two long buildings shown on Rocque is already gone by this stage, long before our esteemed ’60s Corpo road engineers could get their hands on it. Tsk!

“The assessment of the building fabric and features dates most of the extant building to the early 19th century…”

Eh? I thought you just said it can be seen on Rocque’s map of 1756.

That wonderful phrase “preserve by record” also comes up more than once :rolleyes:

These are some of Graham’s pictures again:

Combined with Devin’s picture of the front and the evidence from the maps, would you say that this was an early 19th century barracks building, or an early 18th century building remodelled in the early 19th century to be a barracks building?

The evidence from the back elevation seems to indicate that one window (the centre window at landing height) with it’s masonry reveals was original to the construction, whereas the other opes (with brick reveals) are probably insertions. The width of the stone ope, at about 1,300mm, looks to be on the big side for an early window!

In Graham’s first picture it’s reasonably clear that the stone work continues around the gables onto the front elevation, but presumably the reveals to the nine bay front were all brick and the absence of a door surround doesn’t leave us much to hang an early date on.

I suppose, in advance of seeing the survey photographs, you have to go along with the early 19th century thesis, but, it was still a very decent building and they’re not getting away with telling us that it wasn’t really part of the complex.

All that bad karma we laid down on the OPW, back in the spring, seems to have paid off.

The poor bastards appear to have got themselves bogged down in a nice bit of archaeology.

They started out poking around in the foundations of the DMP building, the one that they shouldn’t have knocked down in the first place, and now they appear to have uncovered some nice stone-lined pits towards the corner part of the site.

It would be nice if there was justice after all.

You didn’t happen to catch the midnight radio headlines did you, gunter?

I didn’t no, what?

Just a brief discussion of the ‘significant archaeological finds’ and a few words from the Senior Archaeologist (?) on the Kevin Street job. Sufficiently important to make the national news, it would appear.

(Unless it was widely known already and I missed it…)

It also featured on last nights 9 O’Clock news – they’ve found quite a lot of stuff !

Watch it here :

http://www.rte.ie/news/9news/

Scroll down & click on last item.

……..The walls by which it was formerly surrounded, and the fortifications for its defense, have nearly all vanished. Neither is Dublin rich in remains of antiquity; one of the few that appertain to its ancient history is a picturesque gateway, but not of a very remote date, called Marsh’s Gate. It stands in Kevin Street, near the cathedral of St. Patrick, and is the entrance to a large court, now occupied by the horse police; at one end of which is the Barrack, formerly, we believe, the Deanery, and Marsh’s library.. ……

“The Irish Sketch Book.” W M THACKERAY

This site was occupied up until the 1970’s by rag pickers and feather cleaners. A few years ago the site was used to park trucks and diggers for some local owrks, at that stage they dug out the first few feet and put down hard core. In any event it was well known that the site had major importance in a medieval context. The whole ensembel should be treated as one. I cannot locate it but I recall that Annegret Simms of UCD produced information about that area. Strange that the OPW should not be aware it.