Royal Dublin Hotel

I’m so disappointed so few people agree with me.
This argument really has nothing to do with conservation or recreating times past etc.
It is simply about how the street LOOKS, its physical appearance, and put frankly, it would look better with appropriate ‘historic’ facades.
I’m not suggesting some straight-laced Georgiana, we could play around with designs, what about a wonderful Victorian gothic facade for the RDH, or a high Victorian front like Gilbeys used to have on the street and like Jurys on College Green for Bublin Bus, or even simple Regency buildings with brown stock bricks and granite corner stones.
The street could be so beautifaul.
This is not recreating the past, it is simply using architectural styles, just like Art Deco is a style, or Arts & Crafts is a style, or modernism, or post modernism, or neo-classisism or gothic and so forth.

But above all, why can’t you all just see that with the rectification of a few buildings on the street, its entire architectural unity would be restored, creating a distinctive place in the city, with a sense of character. Would you not like to see a unified composition in our city, a beautiful civic space with a definite charm and instant appeal as an historic place, an urban space on a par with any other European city?

Making a programme about it, I and others spent days and days in the place, shooting virtually every building, researching them and the place as a whole. What struck me so sharply was the amount of effort so many people went to over the generations, over two & a half centuries to create a unified, dignified architectural composition and civic space, esp in the 1920s, and then the whole effect was to be shattered in the space of two decades from the 70s.

It is imperative and our duty today to restore that composition as some redress for the terrible mistakes made.

WOW, I touched on a vein there!

Eh, everyone, pastiche as defined in the Oxford dictionary as meaning a bad imitation of something, you seem to be mixing it up with ‘replicas’ as it were, or anything not modern.
Anyway, to be honest I’d hate to see Victorian follies on the street, I said it in haste.
But it dosn’t sway me in the slightest from having at least reserved redbrick dressed stone facades, in keeping with most of the street.

I agree Paul that the RDH end is a shambles and always has been, but the rest of the st isn’t & wasn’t. And considering that the southern end is the most unified part of the st, it makes it even more unaccepable for the likes of the schuh building to be butting in.

I ‘surveyed’ the street today, and looking at the schuh bldg, it is unbelivably out of place.
Out of the total of 73 properties on the street, (I’m sad enough to have counted), 65 are ‘historic’, ie pre 1930, 2 are tiny brick clad stuctures at the top end, unnoticable, and the remaining six are the nasty usual suspects, Pennys, Bus, Fingal, RDH, Eircom and Schuh.
As I say, there is no architectural unity to the RDH end, but there would be a historic unity if the buildings mentioned weren’t there, nothing spectacular would prevail, but a sense of character would.

Although frankly I’d prefer modern structures on the St any day if new ‘sympathetic’ structures built were to be treated in the manner the present ones currently are.
Most of them are in the most appaling condition above street level, with a century of grime on them, and most of the windows look like they haven’t seen a coat of paint since the Rising. And as for the invasion of PVC!
Carrolls ‘Irish’ gifts beside Ann Summers looks like they had their PVCs installed a mere 1/2 years ago, are they not banned on the st?

You know what, the many good points from ‘your side’ has actually swayed me slightly.
I have come to my final conclusion that O’ Connell St has always progressed.
Gardiner created a unified composition, which the Wide Sts Comms adapted sypathetically for commercial uses, then the Victorians came along and wreaked havoc on the street with their ‘feature’ buildings, then the 20th century came and bombed the backside out of half of it, resulting in a fantastic opportunity to restore some architectural unity to it, which was achieved to a degree in the 20s & 30s.

I have been swayed to agree that a more modern, nonetheless sympathetic, facade is appropriate for the RDH and Eircom simply due their lage, expansive facades, where the potential exists to create landmark buildings at the upper end.
However, looking at Dublin Bus and Schuh again this morning as I was passing, there is absolutely no excuse for modern facades on these. Both are very narrow buildings, both exist in entirely brick clad and older terraces, and both exist in the lower, or near the lower unified part of the street.
Building modern here smacks of sheer arrogance, that ‘we must make a statement’.

Building ‘replicas’ in the areas I mention is not a theme park attitude, if that were the case, is Harcourt St a theme park? Or the east side of Stephens Green? Or the south and west sides of Mountjoy Sq? Or all wooden Victorian shopfronts going up in every town and village across the country?
Building ‘old’ as it were, in strictly limited areas to either architecturally or historically unify an area is not a bad thing.

I think its very interesting though, that if Gilbeys, once one of the city’s finest Victorian buildings, that existed on the Fingal site, was demolished today, there would be absolute uproar over the issue and an immediate order would be slapped on the developer to rebuild it faithfully, down to the last doorknob. And yet, because 30 years pass by with Fingal in its place, the whole idea of rebuilding now is completely laughed at. Indeed, such is the extent of this irony, that it is entirely likely that if its owners proposed to built Gilbeys now, it would’nt even get planning permission!

Just found out that Carrolls Gifts and all of it’s terrace has been protected since at least 1991, long before its PVCs was installed upstairs.

And I also see that the GPO have lodged an application to modify the Princes St entrance to the building. But the sheer ignorance of An Post, they have posted the application on the HENRY ST side, of the building, so anyone seeing it couldn’t be bothered to go around to the other side to inspect the development. But above all, its posted as high as is possible on the lower sash of the window so the average passerby can’t read it. I could barely make it out, other than interventions to the exterior stonework and modifications to the 30s interior lobby.