Devin
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It appears that the Soane bank would have formed part of very grand architectural plans for D’Olier/Westmoreland Sts. that the WSCs had in mind at one point*, which I think would have created too much granduer so close to the Parliament House & Trinity. Then there was also a plan for brick elevations with an arcaded walkway at ground floor – which is a nice idea but maybe not that suitable for Dublin. Then they finally settled on brick elevations with regular ground floors, like had recently been completed on Lwr. O’Connell St.
The thing is, what was built (the least grand of the three options) was absolutely perfect for setting off the House of Lords portico & Trinity front to the south, & Pillar & GPO to the north.
Those piered granite shopfronts of D’Olier/Westmoreland Sts. looked fabulous running one after the other along the street – a real case of the whole adding up to more than the sum of the parts 🙂 .*Feature by Edward McParland in the Irish Georgian Society bulletin, Jan.-Mar. 1972.
The ‘Happy Ring House’ sign is a relic from that era too. The funny thing is, if somebody put up a modern sign of equivalent impact today, there would be shock and horror, but the Happy Ring House is considered part of the character of O’Connell Street.
@Graham Hickey wrote:
It’s interesting you mention the brick colouring of D’Olier St & Westmoreland, I’ve always wondered which street won the battle to have ‘their colour’ displayed on the prestigious corner building facing onto the bridge at the apex of the two streets – was it Westmoreland’s red or the stock bricks of D’Olier?
It’s so frustrating as I’ve only ever seen black & white engravings of it 🙂I meant that there are two different brick colours on D’Olier Street itself : while the Irish Times buildings on the west side of the street are in the yellow-brown stock brick, a couple of the much-altered survivors on the east side (Cara Travel & Funny Biz) seem to be in red brick, which is surprising.
Here’s a photo of the original building at the apex (with Smith O’Brien in his original position in the foreground) – though I don’t think there are any clues as to the colour of the brickwork, texture wise. The fussy Victorians, not being able to handle the relentless order of the Wide Streets Commissioners’ plain, unified street-elevations, had already dickied up the building with cornices & balustrades etc. But that wasn’t enough, so they demolished it in 1894 & built the (unquestionably lovely) baronial gothic ICS building.
Probably the worst of O’Connell Bridge House’s numerous sins is that it destroys the primacy of the ICS building, which was so obviously built to be a central dominating landmark in the D’Olier/Westmoreland composition.
If a replacement building was going to be as good and as appropriate as the ICS building in that site, that’s one thing, but the way that the still-fairly-intact original WSC’s D’Olier/Westmoreland scheme was allowed to be whittled away – usually for crap new buildings – between 1960 and 1985 was disgraceful! It should have been recognised for the hugely significant piece of European city design that it was.
There was the Carlisle building and its replacement (say no more), then 4 more originals for D’Olier House in the late ’60s, then the pointless demolition of the Ballast Office in ’79 for a sterile fake, then the mirror glass building to each side of the Paradiso restaurant facade, which took 2 originals and a good quality 1920s replacement on the Fleet St corner, then 7 more originals behind the ICS building in the early ’80s; 3 on the Westmoreland side & 4 on the D’Olier side for a depressing pastiche.
I thought it was generally accepted that the Luas wirescape is pretty minimal. To me Luas’s wires in College Gn. would be better than the current narrow pavements / constant fumes and harrassment of traffic.
I think Supermacs is really the truly offensive one of the four, occupying a prime corner site, with its cheap nasty horrible, horrible white framed doors & windows, dated slanted profiles, posters pasted all over the windows, cheapo internal fixtures for the world to see though its picture windows……the pink paint on the panels of the upper floors looks cheap and jarrs with the red brick further up.
Lovely windows upstairs thoughThe vile ground floor of Supermac’s is certainly in stark contrast to the pretty upper floors. Interestingly, this building was the only one in the block between the Quays and Abbey Street that needed to be rebuilt after 1916 – as opposed to not needing to be rebuilt, i.e. the two nice originals (on the right in the picture) that were demolished in the ’70s to make way for the predecessor to Schuh 😡
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Originally posted by Paul Clerkin
I tend to agree with you.
I meant that in relation to the comments above about Newstalk 106 saying it could go underground between Dawson St & Westmoreland, & people saying where will the buses go.
I feel it’s important that Luas goes through College Gn. The 3 elemnts of beautiful historic buildings, a public space and trams going through creates a certain special something in european cities.
The ’80s brown brick yoke on the Henry St/Liffey St. corner is truly awful! In fact both corners of this junction are awful.
Originally posted by Rory W
Now if Arnotts could just sort out their main facade and do away with the prefab look…I presume you’re talking about the loony ’60s curtain wall bit to the west of the main facade with its blue & cyan panels – I think it’s good & should be kept. Dublin was full of these facades not too long ago, but soon there’ll be very few left, so many have been or will be refaced/replaced; Guardian Insurance on Stephen’s Green (refaced in granite with a big copper roof), O’Connell Bridge House (made worse), Pelican House (demolished) – and now the Bank of Ireland on Suffolk St (has current planning app for glass facade by Donnelly Turpin), the Department of Justice (recently sold) and Hawkins House (revamp or demolition awaiting).
Most of them were awful of course, but when you see it used here in-scale in a street context it’s a harmless bit of ‘sixties interest – & the fact that it sits there amidst the main 1894 Arnotts building and the 21st century Roches across the street. I’d be sorry to see it go (which it probably will sooner or later).
Adjoining the ’60s bit of Arnotts on the other side is the newly-opened ‘Office’ shoeshop, which has a marvellously simple white shopfront (though will probably get filthy soon & have to be re-painted a darker colour). The building above is a delicious circa 1900 red brick & yellow terracotta gabled affair, like a minature version of Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street (it’s probably by the same architect).
Originally posted by StephenC
I cant believe that you are all seriously suggesting that a McCafe is a positive development for O’Connell St. I see no difference between a McDonalds proper and this McCafe format.Much as we’d like them to, the fast food restaurants are not going to go away, so we may as well welcome any improvements in their appearance however slight. The long-awaited ‘higher order’ uses for O’Connell Street are only going to begin to happen on sites or in premises’ that are now vacant or house short-term concerns.
Back to Graham’s Four Georgians post for a minute:
Yes, it’s quite interesting to see that wrecked bit of exposed red brick at 1st floor level of 34 Bachelor’s Walk. I think that most of the damage to the brickwork you can see there is more recent than 1916 & was probably caused by various steelworks & mountings for billboards etc. The stone window sills have also been crudely shorn flush with the facade to acommodate advertising structures (no respect!!).
That said, photos of the group immediately after 1916 show them to be very pock-marked with machine gun fire alright, and I think one biggish hole about half way up the corner building on the south facade (can never find the photo I want!). The patch-up job just shows the mentality there was at the time of keeping anything that didn’t absolutely have to be replaced (whereas they were demolishing hundreds of perfectly good Georgian & Victorian buildings all the time here, there & everywhere in Dublin between the ’60s and the ’80s.
The bit of red brick also confirms (since there are no known colour photos of O’Connell Street prior to 1916) that the Georgians of Lower O’Connell Street were in red brick and not the yellowish-brown brick of the same-design-concept but slightly later D’Olier St. scheme, as seen in the Irish Times buildings (although one or two of the survivors on the opposite side of D’Olier Street seem to be in red brick :confused:.)
Sometimes I think it would be good to remove the render and restore the O’Cll. St./Bach. Wlk. group to their original appearance – with modern building conservation practices it wouldn’t be much trouble to repair damaged brickwork and tuck-point the facades with lime mortar – they would look very well.
The only thing is that by removing the render you would lose the sharp detailing on the corner building: the modillion cornice & window architraves, and there is a conservation argument or principle that you should respect later alterations in a building. I know the architraves are quite plain and simplified relative to a lot of similar Victorian/Edwardian embellishments, but I think they look kind of good, especially the one at the tripartite window on the first floor of the O’C. St. facade, and suit the 1920s plate glass sashes. These sashes were painted navy I think until recently but are now off-white which harmonises well with the sandy cement-render of the early 20th century. Still, overall it might be worth restoring them to brick, as a relic of the sublime streetscape that once was.
The Council do want to get this corner in shape, though. In the O’Connell Street IAP Special Planning Control Scheme (2003), all of the advertising structures here are “designated for removal” (exactly what the leverage is for doing this though, is not clear). The Special Planning Control Scheme is an interesting document & makes a good companion to the original IAP plan. It might be on their website (I haven’t looked cos they sent An Taisce a hard copy 🙂 .)
Mc Donalds opening a Mc Cafe on O’C. St. is an interesting development; When you think of the Grafton Street Mc Donalds, the face to the street was transformed (positively) when the Mc Cafe opened.
Because McDonalds O’Cll. St. occupies two building frontages in the middle of the burger strip, if done right the Mc Cafe could have a turning-around effect on the whole strip.By far the worst on the strip is Supermacs, with its PVC & polished granite shpfront. I know fast food restaurants are an easy target but I hold particular DESPISE-ment for Supermacs (yes I know, great-Irish-sucess-story….) – once they open on any main street, they become the focal point of the town – just think of Nenagh, Carrickmacross, Athy, Claremorris & of course Eyre Square, as hilariously sketched by el architino on the ‘New Design for Eyre Square’ thread.
I hadn’t seen the piece in the paper – just saw it now – looks like the news puts the tin hat on that planning application
Originally posted by Paul Clerkin
manys the evening, i topped of my beer with a bif fry at midnight there….Yeah, they just started closing earlier & earlier, first 10pm then 8pm.
folks tell me that, in the 60s & 70s, the whiff of coffee on the street walking by the Westmorland & Graft St. branches would knock you out & their cakes were extremely fine – & the quality nosedived when campbells catering took over.
Still, there’s a current planning application in (ref. 4445/04) to expand the Bewley’s Hotel on Fleet St/ Westmoreland St into the foreign language school on the upper floors of the Cafe on Westm. St (including the “replacement of period windows to front facade at 10,11 & 12 Westm. St.” (graham!)) which the architects brazil lohan say in their covering letter “forms part of the masterplan for the whole site which is currently being prepared for planning application”.
(???)
The word is that:
Planing permission was granted for the terminal on the 5th of January, 1998 – Clare CC ref. no. 97/1277. Condition 1 required that “before the proposed development is occupied” the method & location for treatment of effluent be agreed & have regard to the conservation status of the receiving waters which are the Shannon Estuary Special Area of Conservation, a major dolphin habitat.
The terminal was opened in 2001 without any sewerage treatment system being even commenced, that means there could hardly have been any certificate of Compliance. Aer Rianta are only now getting around to inserting a sewerage treatment plant.
Meanwhile Martin Cullen has been salivating over the 16 million Euro extra landing fees coming into the coffers for the use of the place as a U.S. military & prisoner transit base over the last year.
Queries to Aer Rianta reveal a worrying lack of fire safety compliance. (if you want travel advice use Knock instead – as long as you close your eyes to the architecture).:)
Originally posted by jmiom2004
I also got onto An Taisce to see if they had any guidelines, or literature to guide a person to build a house that they wouldn’t automatically object to, and got told, apply for planning, if we object, we object! I was hoping for something a bit more constructive than that!An Taisce is a small independent organisation with small resources!
Did you get on to the govermentment & ask them why there are no guidelines for Donegal.
If the government had made sure every county had guidlines like the Cork guidelines several years ago Ireland might not be blighted with so many nasty one-off houses.
