vitrolite shopfronts

Love the vitrolite – when I was a child, Monaghan was full of those shopfronts, now all gone. Also quite a few shopfronts covered in terrazzo, not just the step but the entire facade.

Interesting site here about the material. Applying it to shopfronts was quite a skilled process:

http://www.vitrolitespecialist.com/intro/intro.htm

a nice one in Drogheda

This thread spawning has got to stop! 🙂

It seems it was a fairly cheap and easy way to transform a shopfront into something very fashionable. They must’ve been very glitzy in the midst of the sombre 19th century shopfronts still prevalent all around.

Yeah, some had very modern signage for their times, I can remember some with a font very similar to Gill Sans, very clean and modern for a country Irish town.

Gemma’s Newsagents in Dalkey Co. Dublin is nice. As a matter of interest, has anyone ever seen Sean Rothery’s book on Irish Shopfronts from the late 1970s? I would say that it must be quite interesting to look at.

And more about Vitrolite on the Art Deco Ireland website

http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/6941/vitrolite.htm

Thanks for that Ctesiphon. I will try and check it out at some point. The reason I brought it up was that there are a few sketches of Art Deco shop fronts in his ‘Ireland and the New Architecture’ from 1991.

Thanks again.

Phil

As Lexington mentioned Dundalk, I think I also recall quite a few similar style shopfronts in the late 80s.
But now, as far as I know there isn’t a single one left in the town, not even one.

It has to be said vitrolite is far from everyone’s tastes – not least as it has a decidedly tacked on, flat appearance when used on most shopfronts. Saying that, I think that’s what makes them interesting and stand out from the crowd.
That latter corner shop Devin posted in Cork is a lovely example of the material’s use.

Came across this stunning example in Bantry recently – it is in a perfect state of preservation:

Surely one of the best in the country?!
The panels are excellent condition, as is the chrome trim around its lovely big picture windows:

And the oh-so-glamorous overdoor detail :):

A remarkable survivor. Indeed so many shopfronts from all periods survive in the southwest that you just don’t get anymore in the developed east and increasingly developed mid-west – shopfronts you forgot ever existed like tiled or mosaicked facades from the 40s and 50s that were once prevalent in every town in the country until 1996.
Most of them relatively insignificant architecturally, but culturally important.

When saying there were no vitrolites left in Dundalk I forgot all about Connollys (perhaps understandably ;)) – but it’s notable all the same as seemingly being the last vitrolite shopfront in a town that used to be full of them. A later plastic is used for the sign.

Haven’t been in the shop in years, but I think it just might have vestiges of Victorian/Edwardian cornicing inside – serving to highlight this practice of putting glitzy new facades onto old buildings.

A page about vitrolite is on the Art Deco Ireland website at
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/6941/vitrolite.htm

There is another fine example in Limerick
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Salon/6941/leonards2lrk072003.jpg

and there are two vitrolite shop fronts in Upper Leeson Street, one shop is now vacant however.

Upper Leeson Street

(forgot I had this – will look through the rest tonight as I’m sure I must have more from around the country)

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Haha, great picture Graham – Attack of the Auld Biddies or what! 😀

@Morlan wrote:

Haha, great picture Graham – Attack of the Auld Biddies or what! 😀

Actually that’s my pic, Morlan.

Here’s a few:

Ranelagh, Dublin. This was a launderette up to the late-‘90s. Then it was taken over by Nectar restaurant who fortunately recognised the value of the authentic ‘50s front. But more recently the baby blue vitrolite panels were replaced with stainless steel :confused: (it was the only one I know of in this colour in the country).

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A fine specimen in Arklow.

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Roscommon Town. The shop was closing down when this was taken a few years ago, so it could be gone now (is there anyone in Roscommon to confirm whether or not it’s still there?).

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Naas – nice.

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Carrickmacross. Closed but maintaining its dignity.

There’s a fair few left around the country.
Better leave it at that and not give all my photos away to archiseek!!

Great ventilation grill there on the last one – indeed it’s interesting how nearly all of them not only feature a grill, but also place emphasis on their design and material used.

The Jordan one is my favourite, and fantastic sashes upstairs too, tucked in under the eaves :). What’s the likelihood of them still being there….?

The coloured version of vitrolite is striking, esp the blue, though frankly the peachy coloured one doesn’t quite do it for me – yuck!

Subsidence always adds an interesting twist to architecture – as with Boyles 😉

Yeah, I was thinking that myself, but it didn’t seem to be (underneath) on closer inspection.
Actually, I went in and asked one day but the only person there didn’t have good english – meant to go back again but never got around to it…

Nice shots Devin.
Must dig out a few more of mine to post up – I had the Arklow one also.

Regarding the Ranelagh Laundrette -the vitrolite was damaged and the metal finish is, I think, only placed over the lower vitrolite. Vitrolite is very strong when attacked directly but a bad blow on the edge of the sheet can be fatal, this is easily done when bringing in mechanical equipment through a narrow door.

An edge on whack leaves a big chunk likely to be missing.

That’s interesting. It’s quite sad when you see them around the country and a few panels are cracked; ‘cos you know the whole front is likely to be replaced – you can’t just go and get a replacement panel like you can a piece of timber…

Ranelagh: Yes when it was first converted to the restaurant (circa 2000) the metal was placed only over the lower section of the front, as seen in the first pic. But in the second pic – taken yesterday – the metal has been put over the rest of it too.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

The Jordan one is my favourite, and fantastic sashes upstairs too, tucked in under the eaves :). What’s the likelihood of them still being there….?

That pic is recent enough – they’re still there. There’s a mad old dear in the shop as well!!

A little more vitrolite from Ireland.

Photos were taken in Cashel in 1999.

Wow – that latter one is a great example!
There’s nothing like a bit of symmetry. Those gates are a dying feature on Irish streetscapes too.

🙁 Unfortunately, hoardings have been erected around the old Buckley Bros. shopfront on Oliver Plunkett Street, Cork with the old green vitrolite facade now well and truly removed. For years (more than 20 years under Edward Moriarty), the shop acted as one of those dying breed of traditional Irish restaurant-cum-shops selling all sorts of buns, tarts, tobacco papers, vegetables etc. The restaurant to the back catered to generations of the ‘old breed’ of Corkonians who had made a visit to the premises a weekly staple in the schedule for years on end.

Works are proceeding now to install a new shopfront – of a more modern styling – to cater for a new Butlers Irish Chocolates cafe. Could they have achieved the same by maintaining the vitrolite? Quite possibly.

Thanks to Devin for the above image.

Very nice indeed 😉

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Here is one from Kilkenny

Taken about 10 years ago

The end of Buckley Bros – what a shame.

Oh dear – is there the faintest possibility though that the upper facade was removed just to allow for the installation of those I-beams?
The green vitrolite may have worked quite well with Butlers – reminicent of minty chocolate…

Clearly it doesn’t fit in with their sultry ‘traditonal’ image of black timber shopfronts 🙁

one less shoe shop on Oliver plunkett street. There was loads of them last time I looked.

14 MacCurtain Street, Cork.

Original Vitrolite facade and signage. Now operating as a gallery.

see http://launderettegallery.com

Nice, but it’s a pity about the loss of the original window & door frames / trim. The replacement is not sympathetic to the front at all.

This is an example of the same thing in Longford Town; a nice vitrolite front with (unusually) white panels down the sides, but with unsympathetic ’70s door / window aluminium inserts. It used to be a butcher shop but has been closed now for a while. I gave a talk on shopfront design last week in Longford and mentioned it … said the front should be repaired and incorporated should the shop reopen:

Though you do have to consider that 1940s/50s vitrolite in the 1970s was the 70s muck of today.
Indeed in most quarters it probably still is.

The white above is attractive alright – though the window above equally so 😉

The washing symbols at the top of the window in rayc’s picture are a fun feature.

No surprises there then.

Interesting to see what is a very common phenomenon there next to Blacks – the residential accommodation above with replacement frames, but the comparitively unimportant non-residential part left untouched downstairs.

Some towns are worse than others though, & the sash is nearly extinct in Longford.

On closer inspection the top floor window is some kind of early-20th cen. casement. Still, you’re theory holds.
…nice crumbly old chimney..

Came across this on a trip to Dublin, it is on the East Wall Rd. I don’t know if it is genuine Vitrolite but it looks like an uptodate version.

Know the building well – probably plastic in the sign, though it does create the vitrolite effect alright.
Probably intentional too given the vague 1940s architecture of the building.

Ah, my local, There used to be 13 public houses on East Wall Rd, seemingly when the pre containerisation ports were in full swing.

ANOTHER VITROLITE SHOPFRONT FOR THE CHOP?

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These two buildings (above) on the main street in Ardee have recently been granted planning permission for demolition by Louth Co. Co. (Ref. 04/1684). The plan has now gone to appeal (ABP Ref. PL 15.214750). The buildings are located in an Architectural Conservation Area. One of them has a classic country-town drapery shop with a vitrolite front (below).

Amusingly, the Monaghan-based “Conservation Consultants” who prepared the report on the buildings submitted with the planning application make no mention of the vitrolite; instead, the shopfront is described as a “modern timber shopfront” – hmmm.

Louth’s decision shows that Councils are not taking ACAs seriously – they were supposed to give stronger protection but it’s just ‘business as usual’ if a developer comes in with a plan to redevelop main street Irish town buildings…

Vitrolite is an interesting example of ‘borderline heritage’ – both in terms of age and physical qualities it doesn’t quite conform with what we expect as worthy of conservation. It’s neither old enough, beautiful enough, or striking enough (even as a contemporary 1940s modernist building may be) to fit into the conservation model we’ve built up over the years.

At this stage though, I think more strident efforts ought to be made by local authorities in protecting vitrolite shopfronts where they survive, not least as there’s precious little of them left, especially on the east coast where they’re now almost non-existent.
Culturally it is equally important, if not always aesthetically – as they are one of the few remnants of an almost vanished Ireland, a time we’ve exceptionally little left to remind us of as frankly nothing was built during the 1940s and 50s outside of the housing sector.

Whilst a small shopfront need not hold up a town or village centre redevelopment, invariably vitrolite shopfronts are built onto earlier vernacular buildings, which combined are an integral feature of Irish urban areas, and what precious few survive ought to be safeguarded as much as is possible.
On there more clear cut issue of replacing these shopfronts with heritage models – there ought to be an outright ban on the practice.

Absolutely. I have an example of an interesting square-tiled ’60s shopfront in Blessington being replaced with a really horrid ‘heritage’ model. I’ll root it out & post it soon.

This vitrolite in Inchicore village dissapeared within the last year (whole building demolished, along with adjoining mid-20th cen. cinema). ctesiphon also has some photos of this, as mentioned on the previous page:

The Seabank House on the East Wall Rd (formerly ‘The Wharf Tavern’) probably isn’t going to win any awards but it’s better than the of the proposals that went before. Portholes and other parts of vessels truely belong on the sea.

And here’s my one of it (fortunately different pictures this time 😮 🙂 ) :

The Blessington shopfront I mentioned (sorry about the pole in the first picture, but it was the only place I could stand at the time). It was nothing spectacular, just a bit of ‘60s whimsy, but what a bland replacement, and of course the little sash overhead also gets the business!

I took these photos ages ago, when this thread was still active, and never got around to posting them.

The shopfront of the Pembroke Restaurant, Pembroke St., Cork, deserves a mention on this thread as a stunning contemporary use of the material.

The replacement for the Buckley Bros. frontage is included also – looks quite smart in its own right, but somewhat lacklustre compared to what it replaced.

wow – thanks for the pic of The Pembroke paddyinthehouse: looks achingly smart :). Lovely colour.

The new look (or should that be old look?) Butler’s is very much their standard offering, if a bit sharper than usual. Interesting that they’ve also seen fit to replace what seem to have been c.1920s plate sashes upstairs with Georgian reproductions, bringing the whole building in line with these Regencyesque heritage commercial premises you see in places like Bath and certain parts of London. Are these even Georgian buildings?
Nonetheless the gharish yellow paint would gone down a treat amongst the fashionable of 1810s Cork, even if no longer made with horse urine 😮

The neighbouring buildings look terrible now, especially with all that PVC muck.

@paddyinthehouse wrote:

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Interesting that they’ve also seen fit to replace what seem to have been c.1920s plate sashes upstairs with Georgian reproductions, bringing the whole building in line with these Regencyesque heritage commercial premises you see in places like Bath and certain parts of London.

The whole building before alterations can be seen below.

Yes, I don’t see why the plate-glass 1st-floor sashes had to be replaced either. They were old in themselves and told a story of the building. Good conservation practice is about respecting later alterations as well.

I sincerely hope the very old – probably late-18th century – sashes on the 2nd & 3rd floors have been retained and not just replicated along with the first floor. Unnecessary loss of historic fabric really annoys me!
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So it is Georgian, and early at that! What a fantastic array of windows, including that tell-tale keystone stranded on the gable wall 🙂
If anything these repro sashes are now even more incongruous and damaging to the fabric in light of the above images, as the plates would very likely have been preceded with chunky frames as per the upper floors, and not slimline post-1770ish models as have been installed.

Yeah, they are quite an early terrace – early to mid-18th cen. afaik. The other giveway is the near-flushness of the sashes on the top two floors.

It’s also amusing the way the early-20th cen. Post Office building has been joined on, partly covering one of the gable windows!

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Eaton’s in Terenure in 2000, when the cakeshop was still open.

And in 2006, after conversion to a Thai restaurant.

The problem with vitrolite shopfronts is that a large part of their character and effect derives from the design of original lettering and signage, so when this is removed they can look relatively bland and indistinct.

Agreed, much of their effect comes from the contrast between the lettering and the vitrolite background. I also notice that the air vents are missing in the updated version of this shopfront. These vents are a signature of this period, and it is a pity to see them gone.

In rare cases a new shop tenant will recognise the quality of the existing shopfront and have sympathetic lettering designed, like this chemists on Dunville avenue in Ranelagh which has used a century gothic or similar font. Looks smart (good on you Orla!) :
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Does indeed look well…

Wow – that looks fantastic. An advertisment for restoration if ever you saw one.
The black skirting looks especially good – that marble probably dates from the 80s, replacing earlier cracked vitrolite which was always vunerable down there.

Indeed this whole terrace seems to be of vitrolite, and most impressively restored recently at that.
Pity such consideration didn’t extend above ground level and you-know-who 🙁

The marbled stallriser may have been travertine, an interesting material from the same era as vitrolite, or it may be just plain ol’ eighties polished marble as GH says. It doesn’t sit well with the green vitrolite, so you can’t imagine it being original, as people didn’t do things sloppily before the 1970s! I agree that the current black looks better whether original or not.

The first picture was taken in 2000.

So what is the black material? Is vitrolite available in any form today?

Well there’s the stuff used in the Pembroke Restaurant posted by paddyinthehouse on the previous page which seems to be a modern form of vitrolite. Something similar is used on the River Island shopfront on Grafton Street and on the Pen Corner opposite the Central Bank.

The picture of the Dunville Pharmacy was taken a few months ago. I’ve forgotten exactly what the black material looked like – matt or shiny – and I can’t tell by viewing the picture at full size either.

No Vitrolite is long out of production, it was also relatively expensive to make when new.

There is a person in the USA who has a large supply of Vitrolite, which he bought up from stocks held by suppliers. The main source now would be architectural salvage, but as it is easy to damage when being removed, there may be little in those places too!

This is a shot of D. O’ Mahony’s shop on 6 Parliment Street in Cork City. Am no expert, but seems like vitrolite to me. Not too many other examples left in Cork as far as I can see, although West Cork still has quite a few (although quickly disappearing).

And here is another one (again, I think!). This is the relatively new frontage for a restaurant attached to The Imperial Hotel but fronting onto Pembroke Street.

Yes a rare modern-day equivalent that looks pretty impressive in all its glory – I think we had another view of that premises here before. Extraordinary that such expense is lavished on the ground floor, while the upper facade left as a sea of mediocrity, with plastic windows, typical yellow paint and surface-mounted drainage.

Nice, well proportioned, probably original teak shopfront in pic one too 🙂

@corcaighboy wrote:

Not too many other examples left … although West Cork still has quite a few (although quickly disappearing).

I know somebody who is doing a nationwide study of vitrolite shopfronts, rounding up all the surviving examples. A most worthwhile project. I think she will make it available to the public as well, when it’s done.

Not sure exactly what stage it’s at at the mo. I’ll keep you updated when I find out.

would love to publish that….

Sounds fascinating indeed! A very worthwhile project.

Well as dc3 mentioned earlier, here’s the second of the vitrolites on Upper Leeson Street in Dublin, now vacant:

Lovely transparent, light quality to it, and as typical is sited on standard Victorian stock:

The vents:

Some detail:

Interestingly the original mint green vitrolite has been covered over in this sticky-backed almost An Post green plastic material. You can see the original colour peeping over the vent in the previous image. I could pick at it fairly easily, so it should come off.

Attractive chamfered corners too:

Some damage there.