pearse street developments
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What do you think of it: I approve of it in principle because I work at TCD and like the area to gather education related institutions. The building looks impressive to me, but I haven’t the knack of judging from plans. It certainly makes the winter garden look like dross, which is what it is!
From a completely non-architectural expert point of view…. yeah I think it looks good, though it possibly looks a bit too bulky from the east, a bit like the academy further along does from the west. Maybe lopping a floor off the top would help?
What was really annoying about the Academy, apart from the excessive bulk was, having made a nice job of the facade, they gave no attention at all to the other elevations, they did the pretend-anything-set-back-can-be-treated-as-invisible trick; this building seems better in this regard.
12/4/2008
The worst of all possible scenarios aside from wholescale demolition has come to pass in respect of the fomerly delightful pair of classical townhouses at No. 133 and No. 134 Pearse Street, as catalogued above this time last year.
The pictures below serve to demonstrate the disastrous consequences of an historic building not being protected.
2002
2008
These completely unique transitional style houses as built within the old city boundary have been utterly mauled.
Every single facet of their original fabric and detailing aside from the actual brick facade has been ripped out and replaced with ignorant, cumbersome and thoroughly offensive replicas.
The greatest crime of all has been the complete loss of the original charmingly diminutive doorcases, as recorded by Devin earlier.
© DevinNot even the simple spoked fanlights with original glass escaped the heavy hand of this ‘luxury restoration’,
Shockingly, every part of these unique entrance doors has been replaced with a laughably clunky replica.
A satirised Downing Street comes to Dublin, complete with raised and fielded 18th century panels.
The columns appear to be cast from sections of painted Wavin pipe.
Meanwhile the windows, oh mercy the windows…
The absence of glazing bars, the double glazing, the beading, the horns, the catches, the total loss of original frames and shimmering glass – mammy make it go away, please….
Bye bye original simple spoked railings, hello well – what exactly?
High Victoriana crossed with a fire escape.
Bolted with a decorative flourish. Lovely touch.
Meanwhile up on the roof, all of the orginal natural slating has been removed and replaced with synthethic muck.
Indeed it would appear the roof structure hasn’t even been investigated, while the chimneys continue to rot as ever. Also as can be seen, the brickwork has been brashly repointed, although al least it’s lime mortar.
I simply dread to think what has happened inside. not least as it was proposed initially to significantly extend the rear, plonk a mansard roof on top, and squeeze six apartments onto the site, before being refused by DCC on grounds of over-development, lack of open space and non-compliance with minimum apartment sizes. Critically, there’s absolutely no reference online to any of these recent works acquiring planning permission.
There is now not a single one of these houses left in its original condition on Pearse Street. You have to round the corner onto Sandwith Street to find just one of these little gems straggling on out of two full terraces.
How long before this too succumbs to developer treatment?
What a loss.
© DevinWhat a hatchet job. Sadly, i think you’re correct Graham, they have actually used what are, lets call a spade a spade, shite pipes for pillars. No doubt the interior is destroyed with the same level of malignant disrespect.
So dare I say, who owns no.s 133 & 134 Pearse Street ? who is responsible ? For all the good you do DCC, you are so heavily undermined by allowing this blatant destruction.
The little fella around the corner is lovely, i hope it survives.
Thanks as usual for posting Graham. (that fiesta has no chance of getting outta there;))
Graham, 10 out of 10 on the doors… yes actual lurid orange plastic wavin pipes! While under construction I used walk past agog at the sight
Adding insult to injury, the windows are top-hung. This butchering has been a source of horrific entertainment to me on the bus into the city centre every weekend for the last few months. I think I missed the construction of the sewage pipe doorcases though.
@malec wrote:
What are the people inside supposed to do, freeze?
Good sash windows with shutters can be just as efficient as double glaze … never mind the fact that double glaze in period structures often causes moisture build & damp – older buildings need to breath.
Ah sure we might as well rip out the ranks of 18th century sashes in Castletown while we’re at it so!
1) Reconditioning of windows to tighten gaps
2) Draught-proofing
3) Secondary glazing
4) Shutters
5) Heavy curtains
6) Strategic placement of radiators@d_d_dallas wrote:
Graham, 10 out of 10 on the doors… yes actual lurid orange plastic wavin pipes! While under construction I used walk past agog at the sight
Feck OFF!!! 😮
Unbelievable. I didn’t think such a new low was possible in this city.
I was wondering how they managed it given free-stranding Georgian doorcases aren’t exactly an off-the-shelf product, and knocking against the ‘columns’ I presumed the hollow ring to be of cheap fibreglass or similar.
But never feckin sewage pipes boxed in plywood!If only such ingenuity could be channelled in the right direction. Truly a new low.
Hate to say it but the letting board says it all.
Anyone that markets Pre63 45 years later doesn’t really exhibit a great deal of imagination.
23/7/2010
The attractive group of buildings at Nos. 51-54 Pearse Street and structures to the rear have just been restored and expanded as the premises of architectural practice Henry J. Lyons, designed by, well, Henry J. Lyons. It recently won Best Commercial Building in the IAA awards 2010.
The conservation report as submitted in 2008 appears to have been drafted by Arthur Gibney before his death, perhaps originating from one of the earlier applications for the site. It stands out a mile as a sadly rare example of an architectural heritage consultant who knows what they’re talking about, and is passionate about what they’re talking about. It is thoroughly well-informed, bedded in comparative analysis, and confident in observation. In fact, with the notable exception of Cathal Crimmins, it’s hard to think of many others who produce this quality of work in Dublin anymore.
The Pearse Street buildings bear a remarkable resemblance in date, design, function and morphology to the newly restored collection of buildings at Nos. 58-61 Lower Mount Street.
Both groups initially emerged as residential townhouses, both were altered in the mid-19th century with a central infill building on a formerly vacant site incorporating a carriage arch, both were unified into a singular composition, and both served as a major commercial premises.
As perfectly surmised by Gibney, the structures on Pearse Street “are a strange collage of architectural intentions, utilitarian expression and building interventions. […] Their current expression is essentially the result of changing patterns of use and interventions to fulfill specific functional purposes. Their special historic interest lies in their typological importance as a rare surviving example of a late 19th century workshop evolved from the mutation of a number of former house buildings with a builders yard.†Precisely the assessment we didn’t get over on Mount Street.
When we look at Nos. 51-54, we are looking at three individual buildings that have experienced varying degrees of amalgamation.
The bookend houses at each end are the oldest, built in the 1840s as residential dwellings in line with many of the other classically-informed modest houses built along the thoroughfare in the second quarter of the 19th century. The central, then vacant, plot was the site and/or entrance to the timber yard and offices of builders Crowe and Son, with the house to the right being acquired for their use. They sold out their interest in all the properties in 1873, probably to more builders.
We are not told when the central part of the building was infilled, other than, unsurprisingly, ‘later in the 19th century’.
I think we can be a little more precise in pinning it to the late 1850s, judging by the juxtapositioning of newfangled two-over-two sash windows with older Georgian grids positioned above. The notoriously bizarrely proportioned Georgian central feature window with squat panes of glass was born through later alteration, namely the shopfront.
The central and right-hand houses were both heavily amalgamated, presumably when the central building was built in the 1850s. They feature a highly unusual structural system of piers and supports of an industrial nature to the interior, coupled with equally idiosyncratic Victorian plasterwork of a type not comparable elsewhere in the city. The online photographs are difficult to make out, but from Gibney’s description they appear to use complex layering of cast plasterwork in a manner suggestive of merchant builders exploiting newly available plaster products in an innovative way. The staircase hall for example appears to feature a heavy cornice supported by enormous cast corbels on the walls. The boardroom upstairs is also heavily embellished, while joinery is of a neoclassical character – perhaps Edwardian.
In spite of the 1875 date tablet above the entrance, the likely origins of the handsome stucco shopfront, with its order of Doric pilasters and sombre entablature, is actually 1899 when J. & C. McLaughlin, the famous Dublin engineers, founders and art metal workers, took over the premises, moving from only a few doors down on Pearse Street. 1875 probably refers to the establishment date of the company. McLaughlin’s remained here right up until 1970 when the James Healy foundry kept the trade going a little longer into the final years of the 20th century.
We can see above how the late addition of the shopfront skewed the proportionality of the central window with its odd square panes, where presumably it was another two-ver-two before this. Perhaps the adoption of the Georgian model was an attempt to hide the window’s botched relationship to the flanking windows by making it more of a decorative feature of the façade. It was also a cheap conversion: the top sash it is not segment-headed, but a regular, squared sash lurking behind the brick arch.
The refined detailing of the shopfront is exquisite in its elegant simplicity.
The ground floor of No. 54, one of the original houses.
A scrolled end corbel.
A fun and non-invasive use of stenciling that harks back to the buildings’ former light industrial function.
Newly cleaned and pointed granite with attractive cast-iron grille.
Many of the railings appear to be newly cast – perfect to the 1840s. A lovely eggshell sheen.
The tuck pointing is highly accomplished. One of the top three re-pointed yellow brick buildings in Dublin. Finally we know what we’re at with pointing!
The stopping mortar is the perfect earthy colour. This is all so good you wouldn’t even realise it was restored. The ultimate benchmark.
Interestingly, when the middle building was built, its brick courses could presumably only be matched to one of the two flanking houses, hence why the pointing of the right-hand house at No. 54 ties in perfectly, but is entirely different in levels at No. 51. No. 54 was also in the possession of Crowe’s at the time the infill took place.
One of the most transforming spin-offs from this restoration has been the skillful removal of render from the upper façade of No. 51 (below), which has probably been applied in the 1920s. Luckily it appears to have walked off the soft brickwork. Its removal enabled the restoration to the terrace’s unified state of J. & C. McLaughlin’s alterations of 1899. The beautiful streetscape effect we have today could not have been realised otherwise.
Of course, as seen above, this restoration comprises part of a much larger new-build extension and apparent conversion of workshops for expansive studios, library and ancillary facilities, largely divided from the Pearse Street buildings by way of an atrium. This is naturally the main focus of the development, but as we don’t have access or pictures, we can’t really say much, other than judge by the glossy photographs and descriptions on the IAA page. Very dynamic and typically HJL Corporate TM, as workspaces they seem carefully and freshly designed. The linear emphasis of the studio is lovely and sharp.
I’m not sure if all of the new mega-block on Pearse Street is part of the same development, but either way it looks to be by HJL.
The materials and some of the concepts are attractive, but the executive clothing doesn’t hide the fact that it’s too big and too busy. The anonymity of the entrance also does it no favours, while leaving matters to canvas banners to declare a presence on the street is deeply unsatisfactory. Take these transient elements of non-architecture out of the equation, or even look at the building head-on, and one is left with an expressionless block – a giant pair of sunglasses stranded on the corner that doesn’t know where it is, and people don’t know what it is to help it on its way to feck off somewhere else.
It is discernable how the character of this stretch of streetscape has now changed, where once the unified, if compromised, composition of Nos. 51-54 served as the signature building along here. By all accounts hierarchies can change, but not in such a crude manner, where scale alone takes over as an all-consuming factor, rather than design merit. It is frustrating to see such an arrogantly scaled, blob of darkness steal the limelight from a distinguished set piece that has graciously served this street for 150 years. Smaller and simpler, it could and should have been better.
‘It is frustrating to see such an arrogantly scaled, blob of darkness steal the limelight from a distinguished set piece that has graciously served this street for 150 years. Smaller and simpler, it could and should have been better.’
Ah, Graham, passion and erudition – other bloggers please note. And excellent pics to boot!
Here are some of the buildings involved in that scheme – Nos. 47-54 – before work:
The protected structures Nos. 51-54.
And the two buildings at the corner of Magennis Place. HJ Lyons had refurbished here for their offices 10 years ago. Powder coated aluminium windows and a granite-glad ground floor were put in these buildings, and a new building was built down the lane.
Drawing here of the Pearse Street & Magennis Place frontages before development – http://www.dublincity.ie/AnitePublicDocs/00023887.pdf
So now the two corner buildings and the derilict ones between them and the protected structures have been redeveloped. I think the new building is a sucessful addition. The scale ok with the location opposite the train station, and that there are big buildings on the opposite side of the street. It would of course be a ghastly intrusion into, say, Westland Row, but it’s not problematic in this location imo. Like the reducing pier things in jura limestone. The planning ref. was 3293/06.
They were naughty after they got permission for the main block and saw where they’d get with a planning application to stick a glass penthouse on top of the protected structures, removing pitched roofs and chimneys, but it was refused – Ref. 5155/07.
A nice refurbishment of the protected structures. But a darker colour should have been maintained for the sash windows. There are too many white sash windows in Dublin!
In pavement reinsatement works, the listed granite kerbing along the frontage of the site has been removed and replaced in white granite in breach of Policy H22 of the Dublin City Development Plan 2005-11 which will “preserve, repair and retain in situ historic streetscape and paving features which are of heritage value and which are located in those areas identified in the Development Plan.” (Pearse Street is identified). As well as being in breach of the development plan, the removal of granite in this location:
- replaces a good quality, local material with an inferior quality, non-local one
- introduces inconsistency where there was consistency
- is unecessary as the traditional granite kerbing is very serviceable and capable of meeting modern requirements
- contributes to incremental loss of historic fabric and character in the city
It’s a pretty bizarre state of affairs when the body responsible for ensuring the preservation of something – Dublin City Council – is removing and replacing it with something different.
What’s more, the City Council did an environmental improvement scheme on Pearse Street back in 2004 which actively maintained and incorporated the surviving areas of historic kerbing, including this section of the street. It’s really f***ed up. Maybe if they don’t want to preserve it they should just get rid of the policy ….
And of course a minor detail but the bollards are different to those elsewhere on the street.
Speaking of the Pearse Street works….the old lampstands still remain in a number of places while the roll out of the newer style (seen above) seemed to just stop…..
Got bored?Stephen, the reason I think was that the enhancement scheme that was done in the mid-noughties (which those lamps date to) was confined to a certain area of Pearse Street – ie. in and around the Gibert Library. It was done as a project between the QBN office and DCC City Architects department while a bus lane was being installed along Pearse Street, so as to deliver an integrated design. Leaflet attached below.
It’s a pity resources could not extend to application of such partnership arrangements between the QBN office and DCC City Architects for subsequent installation of bus corridors in other, less important locales of the city ……. like College Green.
Two spanking new additions to Pearse Street which seem to have elicited little or no comment here. Are there any Archiseekers still out there….?
First up its the new Biosciences Building which looms large over the Pearse Street skyline. Surprisingly from street level it has a very satisfactory appeal. Its very urban, well proportioned (I think) and really quite a nice addition to this fast changing street.
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Generous public domain
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I love this side elevation….looked great in the light
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