wish list for Henry Street
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While walking down Henry Street this morning, it occurred to me how mucg better looking the street would be if:
Arnotts removed their horrible solid canopy and replaced it with a light steel and glass one
Penneys had a nice victorian shopfront (like the old Switzers front on Wicklow Street) instead of that awful plastic which clashes so much with the magnificent building above.
Normally I wouldnt advocate pastiche but I think these two buildings need it.
I remember seeing somewhere before that Penney’s frontage is to have a revamp with Sam Stevenson as chief architect…..I am probably wrong as that was ages ago. However the Penney’s building is quite attractive with it’s copper turrets….pity about the street level frontage as already mentioned.
No Greg you are right – I remember the design being in the property section of the Irish Independent a few years ago, there was awnings along the Mary street frontage (before Brown Thomas had theirs) and the niches along the Jervis Street side were going to be opened up with windows put in. There was going to be an entrance on the corner of Mary and Jervis Streets, the upper floors were also going to become retail and the surface carpark at the back was going to be redeveloped. And yes Sam stephenson was the Architect. From the drawings it looked great. I dont know why the redevelopment didn’t take place but I think it was down to the BHS building on O’Connell Street becoming available so that became the flagship store.
Still plenty of time and money around now for them to do it.
Rory W
Correct and right — recently saw another article on the office development now marked out for the rear of the site as hq for Penny’s but cannot find the link.
On the same theme,
St.Georges st., some great building
and a nice street from about 10ft upwards.
A Corpo makeover of the pavements
would do wonders.Penny’s was instructed some time ago by Dublin Corporation to develop the car park site at the rear of their head office, of have it purchased compulsarily by them for development, due to the scarcity of building land in the city centre. Plans are well advanced for this and a major overhaul of the present Mary St. building.
I agree, Penny’s definitely needs a face lift, great building and has a lot of potential. I heard planning permission was eventually given to the primark group to build a h.q. at the back which included extensive refurbishment of the store.
Second on the list has to be Marks & Spencer – who the hell granted them planning permission to build that, its just a giant concrete wall – should be blown up and Roches is just like a big plastic crate – to say that both buildings need major work is an understatement.
Henry Street is interesting in that above street level, there is some pretty good architecture (and some really dire pieces like HSamuels) but the quality of the shopfronts is almost universally awful.
What does people think of the resurfacing and street furniture installed?
I think the furniture is awful – the lamp posta are quite nice though. I must say the flagpoles and the twee flag things are very … what’s the word . CRAP. There very washed out and pastel-y. AWFUL!
For Gregf on Arnotts thread
http://www.archeire.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/northcity/henry_street/pennys.html
Do you remember in the heady days of the late 80s when it was proposed to put a canopy over the whole of Henry Street…. now that could be quite interesting. Personally I think the street is more suited to being under the open skies…its charachter would change to much.
Roches are in the midst of a revamp arent they so you can expect and improvement on their 70s monstrosity sometime next year. I think the biggest eyesore on the street is the Ilac centre. A redevelopment of this whole site has been touted for a couple of years now. I tried fishing for some info when I worked at Irish Life but there’s nothing mentioned on their websites.The bizarre thing about the Ilac Centre is that, the ghastly concrete wall which forms the building at first floor level is, well, just that, a concrete wall. I have seen an aerial view of the building, and the majority of it is just one storey in height. The upper part is just a wall which forms a hollow enclosure over the roof, there isn’t even any purpose to it!
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