Devin
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I would say replanning our whole environment around the motor car is the main reason.
Two more old pics of College Green here, the first one from 1900 direction and the second from the 1940s. Lots of life in both pics:
I don’t know about that. It just looks like a general form of transport, like in Amsterdam today, before the levels of motor traffic made it impossible/unpleasant. Notice old gents and ladies who don’t look poor in the shot outside City Hall.
This (1961) must have been about the last time you saw mass cycling in Dublin. The decline in the ’60s must have been massive. I wonder did people talk about this at the time, or did it just go unremarked?
Even going out on the city streets on a bike today, you are mostly on your own – no other cyclists around you.
Yeah the Cushman collection is great. The Kodachromes must have been properly stored over the years too as they’re in fantastic condition … almost no fading of the dyes.
Browse it here – http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/results/result.do?query=country%3A%22Ireland%22&action=browse
DCC should use this picture to add a bit of retro ambience to their promotion of the bikes scheme.
Interesting to see the terrace knocked out for the Central Bank – ie. to the right of the red dotted line.
Looks like we’re entering a new term with the disruptive child of Londis, Lower O’Connell Street. They had the neck to leave this massive “temporary sign” in situ long after the repaving and public realm scheme was complete and the street looking pristine.
As a resolution, this proposal was granted permission in Sept. ’08 under 3004/08; enlargement into the next door premises and improved, simplified shopfronts. A similar decision to Centra on Dame Street – the planners ensured one half of the frontage was for cafe use only.
So now we’re up and running with the permitted scheme and straight away there are problems with breaching of approved signage design, additional signage and general garishness.
Just do the f***ing right thing and your sales will improve and the city will look better !!
There was another interesting higgledy piggledy group to the west of these, demolished in the early ’00s for the Collins Square apartment scheme. I have a picture somewhere ..
Gunter, your pic of thisisnotashop with a for sale sign reinforces my feeling that the art gallery didn’t put the windows in – ie. it was a new owner.
The old shop was a classic. Mr. Downing wore a white coat. Closed about 2003.
It’s hard to say if the two on Rocque are on the precise site of the existing houses, as there’s much less to go on, but they’re roundabout there anyway.
BEFORE
AFTERThisisnotsshop art gallery on Benburb Street have replaced the sash windows in their building with PVC. I want to think it’s just an installation for the Fringe Festival but I’ve a feeling they’re going to be left in. If so, the ironic reference to the tradtional neighbourhood shop that previously occupied the building (top picture) will be lost.
Who did this? It can’t have been the people who set up the gallery a few years ago, can it? Because they maintained some historical continuity for the old shop in the name of the gallery and by keeping its architectural features – shopfront and windows. They would not have replaced symbolic sash windows with single-entendre white plastic windows, would they?
Either way, this is a philistine intervention and a blow for art and architecture.
There was a review of the Scheme of Special Planning Control for O’Connell Street this summer, and a revised document. Can be opened at the bottom of this page: http://www.dublincity.ie/Planning/OtherDevelopmentPlans/SpecialPlanningControlSchemes/Pages/ReviewofO’CStreet.aspx
The objectives haven’t changed – improve the use culture and shopfront design, avoid concentration of certain uses etc. etc.
[align=center:304131xm]Narrow pavements [/align:304131xm]
Not a bad group of buildings here on Dame Street at the junction of George’s Street. You don’t notice them much cos you’re usually concentrating on not getting skulled by a bus if you step off the narrow pavements.
[align=center:304131xm]Improvements[/align:304131xm]
Strange but true: some shopfront improvements are planned here. The Centra is being enlarged into the building next door. The planners usually discourage knocking buildings into each other like this cos you lose the fine grain of the street, but it’s being allowed in this case cos it’s being done minimally and because of the design improvements to the frontage.
[align=center:304131xm]Sex shop[/align:304131xm]
The existing shopfront is being given an arcaded treatment, picking up on the upper floors, while the former Condom Power shopfront next door will be largely glazed, so as to be more see-through, giving less protection from the street.
The applicant claims it will “rid the street frontage of the sex shop and its opaque shuttered window”, with sordid goings on behind, no doubt.
Planning Ref. is 2339/09
@missarchi wrote:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0803/1224251928761.html
Paving in Dublin city centre
Madam, – Elaine Howley, of the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, understandably highlights mobility concerns of the visually-impaired in the urban environment (July 31st). Any considerate society addresses these needs in a balanced and sympathetic manner, taking account of the requirements of both the individual and any special sensitivities the host context may have.
In the case of College Green, authorities were dealing with historic paving in the most architecturally important urban and civic ensemble in the State – one of the few spaces in Dublin of true European significance. This is a highly sensitive conservation area which demands the very best in design skills and craftsmanship.
English Heritage has outlined a number of ways of dealing with tactile paving in such contexts, stating: “Historic areas are more sensitive to the colour and types of paving used, so the standard red and buff-coloured concrete blistered paviors can often be inappropriate for their surroundings, being in close proximity to buildings of special architectural and historical interest. A sensitive interpretation of the guidance which incorporates both human and environmental needs is required.”
In spite of tactile paving not seemingly being required outside the bank, featuring two minor driveways in a pavement where the visually-impaired have right of way, a number of sensitive options were still available for consideration outside Trinity College. These include the recommended use of brass studs set into the paving or specially textured slabs of contrasting natural stone. In any event, the net benefit of this tactile paving has been cancelled out by the mind-numbing array of newly installed municipal clutter on College Green, which generates unnecessary obstruction for the visually-impaired, as well as markedly degrades the aesthetic quality of the capital’s flagship civic space.
Henry Grattan and Thomas Moore on College Street now stand in pools of tarmac, while both are surrounded by enough poles and traffic signal boxes to wade through the visual chaos like a Venetian gondola. A deliberate Continental design reference no doubt. The magnificent long-lost vista of James Gandon’s former House of Lords portico from College Street also remains concealed by a forest of scrawny trees, a situation that could have been corrected as part of the Bus Gate works. – Yours, etc,
GRAHAM HICKEY,
Dublin Civic Trust,
Castle Street, Dublin 2
Great stuff, Graham. Beats hissy rants on internet message boards, eh? 😉
@gunter wrote:
What is so terribly wrong about that building?
gunter, I’m surprised. We all had a good spout against this building at the tme. The bones of it was that it was (ab)using its poistion at the corner of Bolton Street and and Henrietta Street by using the scale of the latter’s houses when it should have been using the streetscape scale of the former.
….’subservience’ …. ‘supporting role’ …. I have heard you articulate these concepts at least once on the forum before (Paternoster Square?)
(And please don’t go into a big defence against the building because it would be too difficult to take 🙂 )To mark the opening of Bus Gate today, let us remind ourselves of the spectacular botchwork at Dublin’s foremost architectural ensemble again.
It’s been in the paper twice. The elected councillors have been filled in. An Taisce and the Irish Georgian Society have both lodged complaints to DCC about it, copying to various sections (conservation, heritage, architects and engineers), and now the Dublin Civic Trust have put their oar in. But still no backdown from DCC, from their spokesman on the Last Word today when it was put to him. He glossed over with some ‘requirement of integration’ guff.
During work. That Sierra crowd who did the work are brutes …. jack of all trades and master of none …
(But of course the blame for the whole horror lies firmly with DCC.)
During work.
The finished job; white granite added in to the historic yellow pavement and a big awkward red-tile platform.
New white granite casually thrown in in front of one of the most important 18th century classical buildings in Europe. I didn’t think it was possible to be shocked anymore …
And cement strap-pointed.
While the red studded-tile platforms at the road crossings at Trinity and the BOI were there in some form previously – I think they’ve just been enlarged (and renewed) – the ones here at the entrance & exit to the BOI forecourt are ‘virgin’, and the justification for them is frankly ludicrous: the BOI forecourt has parking space for a handful of vehicles and is only open during banking hours Mon-Fri; the small number of vehicle movements thus generated puts the onus for caution moving in and out of the forecourt firmly on the vehicle. But instead irreplaceable old granite has been cut out and unecessary studded tiles put in at an angle. Words fail me ..
Also, note that insertion of crossing-point tiles in this location was NOT indicated on the proposed Bus Gate map plan, as originally linked by missarchi:
http://www.dublincity.ie/RoadsandTraffic/QBNProjectOffice/QBN/Documents/T-QBN-127-DSL-001.pdf
The National Council for the Blind insist on these platforms at every crossing. The solution, from a conservation perspective, is use of steel studs (like has been used in some locations in the context of the modern paving scheme on O’Connelll Street), though this is apparently not acceptable to them. They want red tiles or nothing.
@missarchi wrote:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0727/1224251384735.html
Good to see the Civic Trust making their voice heard on this.
Yeah I know, some deliveries movements in the morning. But for perspective there are umpteen crossings in the city with none at all ..
And another thing. The lower end of Temple Lane has been closed off like this (below pic) for weeks while they are relaying cobbles … in the middle of the peak tourist season.
Instead of costing businesses money and disrupting movement through the streets in peak season, it shoulds be done in the winter. There’s all bloody winter to do it. Wasters
What about this? The city council’s Roads Maintenance Division have just laid those studded pavement tiles here in the middle of Temple Bar to help the visually impaired cross the road …. even though this is a PEDESTRIAN AREA where there is NO TRAFFIC.
.. really …There’s some some unfortunate roof plant boxes and other clutter on the crescent buildings in Puerto del Sol.
They should really try to restore roof sillhouettes in that job, given Sol’s prominence.The College Green job is horrific. The Herald reported on it on Monday:
http://www.herald.ie/national-news/city-news/calls-to-halt-digging-up-of-antique-granite-pavements-1807781.htmlSo what are we looking at here ….. really? Reinstatement of the facade and roof profile, and aatrium behind linking to new building?
It’s the one everyone talks about when justification for replica is mentioned ..
Well in fairness ctesiphon, the third parties had to sit there all day of the Wednesday and Thursday listening to consultant after consultant for the developer telling us how wonderful the scheme was in every way, including a particularly extraordinary 4-hour marathon by the developer’s Heritage Consultant which tested the bounds of the English language in how it can be used to describe demolition of historic buildings, or not, as the case may be.
