Devin
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Mid 2005
Mid 2007
Sept. 2008
I see the Parnell Place houses are finally being repaired. But should those top storeys really have been allowed to be cut down with the loss of the original fabric?
There must some old photos of the Beamish complex, or someone on the Cork threads who knows. The photo is only from the ’60s.
Cork didn’t have any of the insane road widening that was done in Dublin in its centre, but still when you look at the old photos, a fair bit of key fabric is gone here and there around the centre. That south end of South Main Street where it meets the bridge, as seen above, seems to have been blitzed. Shame. There’s a Irish tradition of building tight up against bridges like that.
There’s already a history with that job at the side of City Hall. First, the services door they were installing was laid crooked.
Following a complaint, it was straightened.
And now, the final insult: poor finishing.
I’m just reading a report at the moment by the firm Caroe & Partners in connection with ongoing conservation works at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It says:
2.2 PROTECTION IN ANCIENT BUILDINGS2.2.1 The building is of historic and architectural importance and it is essential that this building be handed down intact to future generations. This means that preservation is the main object of the work; every effort must be made to preserve the original fabric, and only in circumstances where this is impossible will new work be allowed. Any new work has to be in character with the old, and this eliminates many modern methods of construction. The work will differ from the normal run of things in that it will have to last for centuries to come, to bear the criticism of future generations and to stand side by side with the loving craftsmanship of the existing building.
2.2.2 In repairing an ancient building, the skill of the workmen is of the utmost importance. The men employed should have a true instinct for the right treatment of materials and it is important that they should be told of the need for preservation whenever possible.
You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
@gunter wrote:
Here’s a few more photographs from the 1960s.
This view looks east from Cornmarket. The vacant edge in the foreground would have been the site of the two corner properties shown on Devin’s 1909 map which defined the east edge of Cornmarket, with High Street to the left and Back Lane to the right. Taylors Hall peeping up to the right of the billboard.Wow, where are you getting these from gunter? It’s the most intriguing and most changed part of the city but there are fewest old photos of it.
Another sad aerial picture here from a few years later, probably about 1970, with the whole of the south side of High Street now down, except for that bizzare long billboard. I’m just going to have a little cry here that the main street of the medieval city was turned into a motorway! 🙂
The oblong shape of about-to-be-obliterated-for-all-time Cornmarket still clear on the left. There is a great view looking west on Cornmarket pre-demolition published in Frank McD’s Saving the City, but one view of the city I’ve never seen is the view of Cornmarket in the opposite direction pre-demolition, with those two houses at the junction of Back Lane and High Street. Would love to see that, drool! am I sad?
Also, interesting gabled warehouse-type building to the left front of Tailors’ Hall. Wonder what it was?
@Denton wrote:
If anything the whole concept of an immigrant area a “chinatown” should be premoted and protected. Such sites should be used to inhance the area and not forcefully evict the communities that are there.
But the character of the area, which you now think should be preserved, has only developed because of the shopping centre hanging over the area for years.
So what you want is a repeat of Temple Bar, where the threat of the bus station hanging over the area caused an artistic community to develop on the back of the low and shortterm rents, and in the end it was deemed that this character was worth preserving in itself? But in the end the artist / bohemian character of the place wasn’t kept anyway and we know what happened … So who’s to say the current immigrant character of Moore St / Parnell St. could be preserved?
Whao, unrecogniseable!
More evidence here of the street-pattern genocide that occured in the area in the late 20th century:
@gunter wrote:
High Street c. 1975.Thanks for these pictures gunter. Fine Wide Streets Commissioners terrace. The existence today of Murphy’s Prams on the same building line shows that there was no need to demolish it at all.
We know that the terrace was built in the early 19th century because there’s a map dated 1817 published in McCullough’s An Urban History showing the Commissioners’ ‘hitlist’ in the Christchurch & St. Patrick’s area, and a straggly group of buildings in this location are included.
Murphy’s Prams got permission in 2005 for demolition and new 4-storey glazed building – Ref. 1697/05. Elevations in ‘View Documents’. No sign of anything happening.
@gunter wrote:
this Paddy Healy photograph of the same houses from the top of Nicholas Street showing no. 3 High Street
Paddy Healy was taking pictures of crucial streets at a crucial time. Some of the most interesting photos in Pearson’s The Heart of Dublin are his. His photos of Winetavern Street, Bridge Street, the south quays and High Street show a whole city that’s simply gone …
Sorry I meant that the Ilac has some permeability during shopping hours in that you can walk through it, but Sampson’s Lane is now cut off day & night.
Yeah I notice this in Amsterdam too. All the hotties cycle.
I know. For those of us born in the ’70s, that map is like looking at your childhood experience of the city centre: lots of schools, cinemas, hospitals and surface carparks.
This early ‘80s map shows the network of streets & lanes that was eliminated for the Ilac Centre, in red.
We’re all talk these days in planning of ‘breaking down large impermeable city blocks and integrating them into the urban fabric’, but the impermeability of the Ilac block (after shopping hours) was further increased just last year with elimination the L-shaped route between Henry Street and Moore Street by Dunnes building over the west end of Sampson’s Lane, in blue above.
@GrahamH wrote:
Some pictures of the new development – to be titled ‘Joyce’s Walk’.
Jaysus the imagination would bowl you over. (The major Joyce connection around here that causes this and another street to be named after him is that the former ‘Nighttown’ off Talbot Street is mentioned in Ullyses.)
The official name for the street which is now universally known as the Italian Quarter is the stunningly inspired and poetic “Millenium Walkway”.
@Morlan wrote:
Yes, great and all, that Ireland is building its first tower. But need I remind you what it looks like?
It’s pretty horrendous.. top heavy, bland.. etc.
And we can’t rule out that the tower will be halved in height, or scrapped altogether, due to the recession, regardless of how high the lift shaft is.
Lol! Might end up looking like its stumpy splay-top counterpart in Rotterdam:
Piece for and against, from Irish Times on May 26, 2008. I don’t agree with Frank Allen.
HEAD TO HEAD
Does Dublin need a Metro rail service?
YES: Metro North is an essential part of the infrastructure needed to support development and guarantee a better quality of life in Dublin, writes FRANK ALLEN
METRO NORTH is a response to the extraordinary growth in population and employment that has taken place in Dublin since the 1990s and is an essential part of the infrastructure needed to support future development.
Ireland’s GDP doubled between 1996 and 2006 and employment grew by 40 per cent. Growth in the Dublin area was more dramatic, with employment rising in Dublin city and Co Dublin by 137 per cent and jobs in the Fingal area growing by 184 per cent.
These figures alone explain why the commute between Swords and the city centre has taken longer every year, particularly when many commuters do not have an attractive public transport option available to them. This private car dependency is also contributing to an unsustainable growth in energy usage.
We all want infrastructure to support economic development and commuters, shoppers and policymakers alike recognise that traffic congestion and negative environmental trends must be addressed.
The Government’s commitment to fund major improvements in public transport through Transport 21 allowed the Rail Procurement Agency (RPA) to begin public consultation on a route for Metro North. Excellent progress has been made in agreeing a preferred route and in achieving strong support from key stakeholders.
When we began consultation two years ago, it was clear that people saw Metro as a link between the city centre and the country’s busiest airport. With active participation in consultation by residents, businesses and institutions, the role of Metro North as a vital link for communities on the northside of Dublin is now much better understood.
Metro North is recognised by Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council as necessary to achieving population growth without urban sprawl. Metro North will contribute to the success of Dublin City Council’s regeneration of Ballymun and the renewal of the Parnell Square area. Fingal County Council’s exciting plans to develop Swords as a consolidated town with a vibrant economy depend critically on proceeding with Metro North without delay.
Hospitals such as the Mater and the Rotunda recognise the benefits of a fast, high-frequency transport service at their doorstep. We are working closely with Dublin City University to integrate its campus with regional and national transport services.
A Metro stop at Drumcondra will provide excellent interchange with Iarnród Éireann’s Maynooth line service and will accommodate large crowds attending Croke Park. All of these benefits will not be achieved by Metro North on its own but through interchange with Dart, the Luas Red and Green lines and with bus services at high quality interchanges at many stops.
Visitors to Dublin from the North will be able to park their cars at a 2,000 space park-and-ride at Belinstown and travel to the city centre by Metro in half an hour.
An argument has been made that Metro North should be delayed and that implementation of the Iarnród Éireann interconnector project should be advanced in its place. This argument makes little sense.
The interconnector, whose funding is also provided for in Transport 21, will integrate Dublin’s suburban rail network and create additional capacity for commuter rail services. RPA and Iarnród Éireann are working closely together to ensure that passengers can avail of high-quality interchange between Metro North, the reconfigured Dart and the Luas Green line at St Stephen’s Green.
This co-operation is also intended to limit the construction impact experienced by the public from the two projects. Apart from the St Stephen’s Green interchange, the geographical areas to be served by Metro North and the interconnector are different; Dublin requires both projects to be implemented rather than one or the other.
Considering the advanced stage of design and progress with planning and procurement, a decision to reverse the order of implementation would do nothing to advance the interconnector and would put the implementation of Metro North in jeopardy.
Dublin’s pace of economic growth is likely to slow in the short term, but any future projections of employment and population for the region call for high-capacity public transport. There are understandable historical reasons why the Government was not able to fund the scale of infrastructure in Dublin that is regarded as the minimum required for a reasonable quality of life in other European countries.
Through Transport 21, the Government has committed to investing in infrastructure to catch up with urban growth and to make growth sustainable. If we spend the next year agonising about Metro North, the sequence in which projects should be implemented or whether we need a European standard of public transport, we will be deciding in favour of urban sprawl, continued car dependency creating worsening gridlock and a poor quality of life for Dublin’s future generations.
Frank Allen is chief executive of the Rail Procurement Agency
NO: The proposed Metro line to Dublin airport is just another example of bad – and very costly – planning, writes FRANK MCDONALD
FRANCIS RAMBERT, director of the Institut Français d’Architecture, got it right recently when he diagnosed Dublin as being “sick with urban and suburban sprawl”. We all know this is true; indeed, the Los Angeles-isation of the city has created a commuter belt extending outwards for 100km, with the M50 as its congested distributor road.
The plan to build a metro conjures up images of Paris and other major cities with underground rail networks. But Dublin isn’t Paris. The French capital has a population density of 20,000 people per square kilometre, compared to Dublin’s 1,500 per square kilometre. This raises the issue of horses for courses, and shows we’re not at the races.
Metro North, a 17km line between Swords and St Stephen’s Green, will do nothing to serve Dublin’s sprawling suburbs, with the single exception of Swords. All it will do is to add yet another disparate element to the city’s public transport services, which comprise buses, Dart, suburban rail and Luas.
This fragmented way of getting around doesn’t qualify as a public transport “system”. It is difficult to transfer between modes, there is still no integrated ticketing and the bus service, in particular, is unreliable due to American-style traffic congestion. No wonder most Dublin commuters choose to travel to and from work by car.
Nobody could deny that the two Luas lines have been a great success, even though they still don’t connect. According to the 2006 Census, Luas resulted in a 66 per cent increase in the number of rail commuters in the Dublin area, compared to 2002.
That’s a vote of confidence in high-quality, surface-running public transport. But now the Railway Procurement Agency (RPA), which brought us Luas, wants to go underground for Metro North. One of the main selling points is that this line would serve Dublin airport, where passenger numbers have exploded. But even with a rail link to the city centre, how many airport users would avail of it?
The rather surprising evidence from other European cities, even where airports are served by mainline rail, is that less than 30 per cent would take the train. In any case, if Dublin airport is the priority, it could be served much more economically by a spur off the Dart at Malahide, or by diverting the Dublin-Belfast main line.
Metro North would be extremely expensive. Although the RPA and the Department of Transport have refused to release even ballpark figures, The Irish Times established that the cost was estimated at €4.58 billion in 2004. Allowing for construction inflation since then and design changes that add to the cost, it’s probably close to €6 billion now.
At least 100km of surface-running light rail lines could be built for the same price, and probably a lot more. This would turn Luas into a network serving many more places than Metro North. Even augmented by Metro West, the cost of which has not been disclosed either, Dublin would only be getting a total of 42km of metro under current plans.
The economic analysis of Metro North as a stand-alone project is not impressive. Even with “value engineering”, such as no-frills stations, the benefit-to-cost ratio is nearly three times lower than the equivalent calculation by the RPA of a city centre link between the Tallaght and Sandyford Luas lines, running down Dawson Street.
Yet this vital link, dropped by the Government in 1998 due to sheer political cowardice, has been long-fingered again as the RPA concentrates on the metro project. Sure, it would cause disruption – but nothing quite as devastating as digging up a quarter of St Stephen’s Green to carve out Martin Cullen’s “Grand Central” station.
In economic and even transportation terms, Metro North would only stack up if it was extended southwards to Sandyford, Cherrywood and Bray – in effect, supplanting the existing Luas line. This would involve yet more expensive tunnelling between the Green and Ranelagh.
The major transport project in Dublin that does make sense is CIÉ’s proposed rail interconnector, or “Dart underground”, between Heuston Station and Spencer Dock, running via the Liberties, St Stephen’s Green and Pearse Station, Westland Row. This would knit together all of the suburban rail services, transforming them into a real network. Inter-agency rivalry between the RPA and CIÉ, with each jockeying for position (and public funds), should not be allowed to get in the way of an objective assessment of the priorities for investment – especially in these financially-straitened times. Otherwise, the danger is that Metro North will consume most or all of the resources available.
The Government (including its Green Party Ministers) needs to pause and reflect on the priorities before the RPA enters into a contract with one or other of the four consortiums bidding to construct, operate and maintain Metro North. And that could happen as early as August.
Frank McDonald is environment editor of The Irish Times and author of several books on Dublin
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0526/1211740435289.html
